


that good night

by intrajanelle



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: A Good Dose of Therapy, Found Family, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, SecUnit!Neil, The Murderbot Diaries AU, You do not need to read TMD to read this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2019-11-24 21:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18169967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrajanelle/pseuds/intrajanelle
Summary: In a galaxy far, far away is Neil. A security unit who has hacked his own governor module so the corporation who rents him out to unsuspecting researchers can no longer control his every function. That corporation? The Nest. The unsuspecting researchers? The Palmetto Foxes. That security unit? Fucked.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Do not go gentle into that good night,” by Dylan Thomas. This fic is based on “The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells. You shouldn’t need to read that series to understand this fic! In that series a lot of the terminology is just kind of thrown at you and you’re supposed to figure out what’s going on by reading. I have compiled a list of general terms in the end notes to make it easier on you guys, but if you have any questions please ask away!
> 
> This fic diverges from Martha Well’s series eventually, because in “The Murderbot Diaries” Murderbot is asexual/aromantic/agender and very uninterested in a relationship. As you all probably know, Neil is very demisexual and very into Andrew. Also, as Riko and the Nest exist in this world, and it is The Foxhole Court, there are darker themes in play than in “The Murderbot Diaries.” Nothing explicit. There will be warnings/spoilers in the the end notes when they are needed.
> 
> Finally, thank you Heather for reading this dumb novella series with me and encouraging me to write this. I just wanted to read this fic and here I am writing it because no one has done it yet, I hope I do it justice!

It had been 35,000 hours since Neil hacked his governor module. He could have easily become a heartless killing machine, it was what was expected of rogue SecUnits. Not that anyone had said that to his face, but he’d seen enough movies and television shows where SecUnits gain sentience to know that what was expected of his kind was less talking more murdering. Instead, he’d discovered the entertainment feed, which meant he’d spent the past 35,000 hours immersed in books, television shows, movies, music, plays, and of course, Exy.

****

Neil didn’t know what it was about the violent sport that thrilled him. Maybe it was that some team’s, outside of the space owned by his company, The Nest, allowed SecUnits to play. Maybe it was the reckless, careless way the player’s threw themselves towards the ball. Maybe it was how unpredictable each game was. There were rules and stronger teams and more muscular players and a seemingly set outcome, but Neil’s expectations were constantly derailed by the player’s will to win. Maybe it was that the player’s lives were boiled down to a single purpose: getting goals. It seemed freeing to only have to worry about one thing at a time.

****

Neil’s life was not that simple.

****

He’d been contracted to escort a research group through a recently terraformed quadrant of a planet. They were here to see if the environment was hospitable for colonists. That was it. No daring stunts, no acrobatics, no feats of heroism were required. Just taking samples of the air, water, plants, and dirt and seeing if they were compatible with human biology. But humans never made anything simple and they rarely cared for their own safety.

****

Take now for example.

****

Neil was doing a survey with Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Walker. They were two of the least experienced in the field and Neil was honestly kind of bored watching them poke every other tree for a sample, when even Neil could have told them they were all the same subspecies and would all react similarly to the environmental stimulus. And Neil’s educational sim for biology was crap.

****

So Neil was following them from a safe distance to adequately scan the area for threats. He was supremely bored and looking forward to watching the Exy Semifinals in his closet. When the ground in front of the doctors exploded. 

****

Neil sent a visual of the threat to their team leader, Dr. Dobson, while sprinting ahead to assess and take down the creature. Over the feed Dr. Dobson was yelling to send the hopper to Neil’s coordinates immediately. But the team with the hopper were over ten kilos away, surveying the other end of the forest, there was no way they were going to arrive in time to help. 

****

It was a good thing Neil had hacked his own governor module, because he would have been flooded with conflicting commands and alerts. The Emergency module wanted to protect Neil’s charges, Dr. Dobson’s feed was pinging him with the location of the hopper, HubSystem was trying to download an upgrade for some reason, right this fucking second. Neil ignored all of them and launched himself at the hostile. First he pried Dr. Walker’s arm from the thing’s teeth and placed her a safe distance away. He had guns in both arms and legs, but he chose the larger detachable one on his back and pointed it at the creature’s mouth. A larger hostile warranted a larger weapon. 

****

He fired and the hostile’s head popped like a balloon, splattering all of them with purple goo.

****

He scooped Dr. Walker into his arms. She was unconscious and bleeding profusely from the left shoulder. MedUnit was alerted and prepping for their arrival. He pressed a hand over the worst of the bleeding and made his way over to Dr. Reynolds. She was on the ground, Dr. Walker had shoved her away from the hostile when it attacked. She was mostly uninjured but held down by a tree branch that had fallen in the explosion. Neil kicked it off her and watched her stand, scanning her for injuries.

****

“Gods, Renee, is she okay?” Dr. Reynolds demanded, her hands hovered over Neil’s as if she wanted to take her from Neil’s arms. 

****

This would have been highly inadvisable as Neil’s hands were more capable at inducing pressure and staunching the bleeding. He was also less likely to hurt himself carrying Dr. Walker’s weight the fifty feet to where the hopper was waiting for them, outside the tree line.

****

“Dr. Walker is going to be fine, but we need to leave in case more hostiles are approaching our location,” Neil relayed.

****

Dr. Reynolds did not seem appeased by this, her gaze shifted warily between the trees. As if her human vision was suddenly more receptive than that of her active SecUnit.

****

“Dr. Reynolds we need to leave now,” Neil said and, as much as it pained him to say, “Please grab my arm, I will lead you towards the hopper.”

****

Eventually she responded, holding on to the elbow of Neil’s armor and allowing him to lead her out of the forest. 

****

Dr. Walker’s breathing was raspy, the front of her suit was torn so Neil could not read her vitals, but he warmed the front of his own armor in an effort to keep her body temperature level. He kept Dr. Reynolds talking to rest of the way to the hopper as that seemed to be the only thing able to keep her from being too wary to move forward.

****

As he approached the hopper Neil realized something had pierced his side. There was severe damage. He twisted around and saw something resembling a tooth. Perfect. Usually he would have brought Dr. Walker to the crew cabin and left to take his own place with the cargo, but he was afraid if he put Dr. Walker down he wouldn’t be able to pick her back up again. Also he was still staunching her bleeding.

****

The hopper’s ramp dropped and Drs. Boyd and Wilds ran down to greet them. Neil turned his voice comm on and said to Dr. Dobson, who was still inside the ship, “Dr. Dobson, I can’t let go of her suit.”

****

“That’s all right, bring her into the crew cabin.”

****

Neil hesitated for a moment. In the hopper, SecUnits weren’t allowed in the crew quarters. They were given their own pod in the cargo cabin for charging and healing purposes. Personally, Neil preferred to charge on the floor beside his pod, watching Exy on the inside of his helmet. The pod too closely resembled his station at The Nest, where they mindwiped him after every mission. Any other client would have instructed a medical professional to put a compression bandage on Dr. Walker’s arm and told him to proceed to the cargo cabin until they reached the Hub. Instead, Neil headed towards the crew cabin, fussed over unreasonably by Dr. Boyd. 

****

Dr. Wilds was helping Dr. Reynolds onto the hopper, but Dr. Boyd had noticed the tooth in Neil’s back and was asking absurd questions about Neil’s health and wellness. Neil was  _ fine _ . SecUnit’s were built to sustain this level of injury and still remain functional.

****

Neil told him this. 

****

“But you’re already so small,” Dr. Boyd said. “At least let me help carry Renee.”

****

“Dr. Walker is in good hands, Dr. Boyd,” Neil said. “SecUnits are built my size for ease of storage and travel but I assure you we are built far stronger than the average human.” 

****

Also fuck you, Neil didn’t say.

****

Once they were all inside the crew cabin, Neil got to see the expressions on the rest of the humans faces when they saw the state of his armor. This was another reason Neil loved his helmet. He did not know how to hide his emotions the same way humans did. Right now, his face was doing something painfully awkward, but the humans had no idea. He just looked capable and badass. Because: helmet.

****

Neil sat right on the floor of the cabin, Dr. Walker still cradled in his arms. The rest of the human’s were easily distracted from his injuries by Dr. Boyd proclaiming he would go back down to fetch the field equipment they’d left behind. It was an innocent enough offer, but was met with a chorus of “No’s.”

****

Dr. Wilds in particular grabbed Dr. Boyd’s collar so he couldn’t run off the hopper and accidentally contribute to his own tragic demise.

****

Humans. They never thought about how many more hostiles could be roaming the surface of the planet they were running towards. They were always trying to do the brave, noble, self-sacrificing thing. Without even realizing it most of the time. Neil on the other hand was a smart, capable SecUnit, who knew when something was more than his functions could handle.

****

Like right now for instance, when Dr. Hemmick came out of the supply closet with the medkit and began to attempt to patch up some of Dr. Walker’s wounds. 

****

Dr. Wilds was still berating Dr. Boyd for trying to get himself killed. Dr. Dobson, at the helm, was ordering everyone on board to not get killed on this mission. Dr. Reynolds had been strapped into a seat and looked a little dazed, but kept glancing back at Dr. Walker’s face. Neil checked Reynolds vitals through MedSystem and it looked like she might have a concussion but was otherwise fine.

****

In the meantime, Dr. Hemmick kept talking to him, attempting to start a conversation about what happened on the planet. But Neil kept his head down and did his best to imitate a quiet, obedient SecUnit. One who hadn’t hacked his governor module and could turn rogue at any moment. He clamped the wounds where Dr. Hemmick indicated, used his failing body temperature to try and keep Dr. Walker warm, and kept his head down so he couldn’t see if anyone was staring at him. He was convinced he was the only sensible one aboard the spacecraft.

****

+

****

Dr. Minyard, the human one, was waiting with a gurney when they arrived at the Hub. Their Hub was standard, smallish for their smallish research group, with a basic force field and air/water recycling system. After Neil handed Dr. Walker over to Minyard he immediately double-checked SecSystem’s feed. The force field was operational, he made sure it was running under the facility as well since these hostiles seemed like like exploding out of the ground. He then made sure Hub was locked down for the next eight hours and that no one was allowed to leave without his supervision.

****

Then he marked himself off duty and retired to his pod. His pod was located in the Security Ready Room. Which was a fancy name for “weapons closet.”

****

Neil was freezing. He’d pushed all that was left of his temperature controls keeping Dr. Walker warm and his armor around his midsection was in several hundred pieces due to the tooth still piercing his side. He braced himself, pulled the tooth out in one fell swoop, and then used wound seal to close the skin around the worst of the damage. He removed his helmet and what was left of his armor. He had another set in storage somewhere but he did not have the energy to hunt for it at the moment. Instead, he found the survival blanket in the small medkit he was allowed in his quarters and wrapped himself in it. 

****

Finally, Neil sank back against the wall, connected to the power grid to charge and repair his functionability, and attempted to regrow his missing organic and inorganic components in the eight hours he’d allotted. He was too tired to do anything else but call up an old Exy game, it was hard to pay attention but he didn’t try to. He let the sound of sneakers squealing against laminated flooring, players shouting commands, and the ball ricocheting against the glass dome lull him into a nap.

****

Then someone knocked on his door.

****

No one had ever done that before. Neil stared at it in bafflement for a moment before clearing his throat.

****

“Uh, yes?” he said. Not the most successful greeting, but it would do.

****

Dr. Dobson peered in, her eyes widened upon seeing him on the floor. Neil huddled further into his blanket, trying to hide anything that was falling out or leaking. 

****

“Are you okay? I saw your report of the incident and it says you lost twenty percent body mass,” Dr. Dobson said, stepping further into his glorified closet.

****

Neil was suddenly very conscious of the fact that no human had ever visited him here on any mission. His armor was in tatters on the floor and the medkit had been carelessly upended.

****

“I’m fine,” Neil said, attempting to convey an air of professionalism. Even though he was five foot three and hunched on the ground in a foil survival blanket, face smeared with what Dobson probably assumed was blood. But SecUnit’s didn’t have normal blood, his blood would regenerate more readily, everything would be fixed in a few more hours.

****

From behind Dr. Dobson came Minyard. The not human one. Neil only knew this from their mission files, but this Minyard, Andrew, was an augmented human and clone of Dr. Minyard. When Dr. Minyard was a child his mother sold his DNA to a research facility, highly illegal these days. What came out of it was Andrew, mostly human except for the port at the back of his head and augmented human sight and data processing. He had an onboard hard drive so advanced that he could probably remember every second of his entire life, with plenty of room to spare. Also his forearms were robotic and weaponized, but that wasn’t in his file. Neil knew that from experience.

****

The first time they’d met Andrew had pulled a knife on him and pressed it to the section of his carotid artery that was most likely to render him useless in ten seconds if cut. It was impressive. Neil had been pleased with his knowledge of how to protect himself, at least someone on this ship did. But that wasn’t surprising once Neil realized that normally Andrew was this group’s security consultant. For this particular mission, in The Nest’s territory, it was mandatory that all research group’s be accompanied by a SecUnit. Publicly this was so The Nest could ensure all research group’s were in no danger during their expeditions. Privately it was so The Nest could spy on them through the SecUnit’s camera feed. 

****

Upon their first meeting Andrew had pressed his knife to Neil’s neck right in the perfect space between his armor and threatened to maim him and make it look like an accident if he spied on them for The Nest. Neil had told Andrew he understood and made it seem like Andrew had been the one to implant the order into Neil’s head. In reality, ever since he’d hacked his governor module Neil hadn’t sent reliable reports to The Nest. He sent bad camera angles and inane conversations and spent his time watching Exy or his favorite drama series, Eden’s Twilight. But Andrew didn’t have to know that. Especially since Neil had technically rendered his job obsolete on this mission, Neil thought it best to try to get Andrew to like him.

****

So far, that had not worked.

****

Andrew twirled his knife over Dr. Dobson’s shoulder. As if to say, “One wrong move and I’ll stick this where bits of you are already missing.”

****

Neil rolled his eyes. However. He’d forgotten he was not currently wearing his helmet. Dr. Dobson and Andrew got a full view of him displaying sarcasm, which SecUnit’s were not supposed to possess. 

****

He could see Dr. Dobson’s eyes widening in surprise and Andrew’s squinting in suspicion. 

****

Neil grabbed his port on the back of his neck.

****

“Oh no. It seems as if my systems are malfunctioning. I may need some time alone to repair my visual feeds.”

****

“Of course, SecUnit. Let me know if you need anything in the next eight hours.” Dr. Dobson said. She patted Andrew’s shoulder on her way out. “Come along Andrew.”

****

Andrew followed her but not without watching Neil with an indifferent expression. As if he was trying to erase him from this plane of existence through sheer detachment. 

****

Once the door closed and locked itself. Neil tried to pick up his Exy game where it left off, but he was also running a scan of his system functions as he repaired himself. The scan picked up an order from HubSystem from the time of the attack. The system that controlled, or thought it controlled, Neil’s governor module. The order was “abort” which didn’t make any sense. It had to be a glitch, because when a client was in danger—

****

**PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 39% STASIS INITIATED**

**FOR EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE**


	2. Chapter 2

  
When Neil woke up he was at 80 percent efficiency and climbing. The first thing he did was make sure none of his asshole humans had left the Hub without him. But they were all, except for Walker and Reynolds who were still in the Med Bay, chatting in the small unassigned cabin that served as their common room. Neil dismissed that at first and began running a scan of all security systems to make sure everything was functional.

  
Then he realized what it was the crew was chatting about. The were watching the feed from Reynolds’ helmet during the attack. Neil had kept her talking about nonsensical topics the entire way to the hopper. Every time she faltered he asked another inane question. He asked her where she got her degree and whether she had a relationship back home. How embarrassing, he was watching too many sitcoms. She did have a relationship back on Palmetto with a long haul space pilot named Seth, but it was an open relationship and they were looking for more partners. Neil guessed that’s where the interest in Dr. Walker came into play. He made a note in his files on Dr. Reynolds not to ask her any more personal questions. He didn’t want the details.

  
“I didn’t know he had a voice until yesterday, he always sends messages through the feed,” Dr. Boyd was saying.

  
“He sounds cute,” Dr. Hemmick said. “Forty credits on the SecUnit being a babe.”

  
“Does he even have a face?” Dr. Klose asked.

  
“Allison isn’t here, you’re going to have to wait until she’s better for her to start the pool,” Dr. Wilds said.

  
Neil stopped listening to them. Dr. Dobson was pinging him to check in with her in person if he was feeling better.

  
“Feeling better” was a relative term for a SecUnit. Neil knew she was just being human-polite, but he felt the need to point out that if his governor module was still functioning he would never have a choice about “feeling better.” He would just go back to work as soon as his efficiency was above 75 percent. Anyways, Neil had hacked his governor module and he had stopped leaking. His back where the teeth had been lodged was mostly regrown and he’d regenerated enough fluid to stand up without his head going all static-y. So he was fine, thanks for asking.

  
First order of business found Neil down in storage, trying to find his backup armor. He spent forty five minutes trying to dislodge the box from where it had been jammed behind their field equipment upon landing, when Dr. Dobson pinged him again asking for his status. Neil decided to just suck it up and report to her without his armor. He spent thirty seven seconds debating whether or not it would look weird if he showed up wearing just his helmet and civvies, another fifteen seconds convinced the humans would think that the helmet was just his face before he remembered Andrew and Dr. Dobson had seen his face last night.

  
Eventually, he steeled himself and made his way to the common room.

  
The humans were still crowded around a small table, watching the feed. Though, thankfully, they had swapped out the feed from the attack for the feed of a decades old Exy game. Dr. Day was holding the screen on either end and shouting insults at the referee. He made some good points, perhaps he should have played Exy instead of studying physics.

  
Andrew was watching the proceedings with what may have seemed to be indifference to anyone else, but to Neil spoke of years of security training. He was surveying the situation for any threats. Specifically threats to Dr. Dobson who was crouched over a data pad at the back of the room.

  
“Who are you?” Dr. Boyd said suddenly.

  
Neil noticed the question was directed at him. Ah, right, they didn’t know what he looked like. Neil was caught between being uncomfortable with the attention and disappointed that Dr. Boyd and the others, who all possessed multiple PhDs and working organic brains, didn’t attempt to protect themselves when a stranger walked into their secure, secret facility.

  
“I’m your SecUnit,” Neil said, for lack of a better answer.

  
Technically SecUnit’s did not have names. They each had a numeric code assigned at creation that served to differentiate them to The Nest. But it was dozens of numbers long and a bother to say aloud. When he’d first gained free will, Neil had played around with calling himself Murderbot, Dumbass, Tron, and an assortment of other, often rude, names. It seemed appropriate at the time and sometimes he still did refer to himself as something other than Neil. But approximately 20,000 hours after hacking his governor module, Neil had had a dream. SecUnit’s didn’t sleep, or dream, they were rendered offline by a series of orders from their governor modules, but since Neil no longer had a working one, he’d dreamt. And in his dream there had been a woman.

  
Neil knew who the woman was, after all, she was why he had broken his governor module in the first place. Sometimes, he still dreamt of her body cooling in his lap and he’d wake leaking from every fleshy crevice he possessed. In this first dream though she was alive and she’d called him something. He hadn’t caught the whole word, it might not have even been a name, it sounded long enough to be a place or a command. But the tail end of it: Neil. That sounded right. So that’s what he called himself.

  
But to his clients he was just another SecUnit.

  
“I told you he was hot,” Dr. Hemmick was saying, he was was snapping pictures of Neil on his data pad that Neil could see as they entered the feed. It took most of his willpower not to delete them as they were created.

  
The rest of the humans at the table, except Dr. Day who was still holding the screen, enraptured by his game, looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  
Neil heard Dr. Wilds whispering to Dr. Boyd, “Where does he sleep again?”

  
As if upon the sight of his face it suddenly occurred to them all that he was human. He was not human and he took offense to the very idea that he could be so slow and nonthreatening.

  
He was a scary, efficient, SecUnit, goddammit.

  
“Dr. Dobson, you wanted to see me,” Neil called across the room.

  
Dr. Dobson looked up from her data pad.

  
“Ah, yes, I wanted to go over our original data packet with you. They one we received from The Nest when we came to this planet. Upon further inspection it appears to be missing the flora and fauna section.”

  
Neil brought it up in his feed, distinctly annoyed. He could have done this in his closet and spared them all the sight of his face. He could have remained mysterious and nonhuman for this entire mission. He didn’t know why but as soon as humans saw his face they tended to coddle him and actively prevent him from putting himself in danger. That was supposed to be his entire job. He was not a pet he was a scary SecUnit.

  
While he was busy being annoyed, he also scanned the data packet and confirmed that all details on this planet’s native flora and fauna had been redacted. See? He was highly efficient.

  
“Confirmed, Dr. Dobson. Those sections are missing.”

  
The response to that was general uproarious complaint.

  
Dr. Boyd threw his hands in the air, although Neil could not be certain if that was in response to his news or the Exy game winding down to the last few minutes.

  
“What about the other survey group? The Binghamton? Did they receive the entire data packet?” Dr. Wilds asked.

  
She moved to activate her feed, something regular humans actually had to do manually instead of with their thoughts. If Neil was forced to do anything manually he would work at 150 times slower capacity and wouldn’t be able to watch Exy simultaneously to working, a thought that made him shudder.

  
After a moment Dr. Wilds said, “They aren’t responding to my hail. Strange. Usually they leave an away message if they are off-site.”

  
“We’ll check in with them later, in the meantime, SecUnit, try to figure out any additional information you can about this planet from the Satellite feed. We’ll be going on another survey mission at 0700 hours.”

  
“Understood, Dr. Dobson,” Neil said, already tapping into this planet’s Satellite. It was a vast network that connected them to Intergalactic United Space and all galaxies therein. It also had a wide collection of space dramas in its entertainment feed that Neil had been downloading for his downtime since they’d arrived.

  
Dr. Day smacked the screen of the room’s feed as the Exy game came to a close in double overtime, with, what Neil presumed to be his favored team, losing badly. Neil didn’t know why Dr. Day was surprised, that game probably aired before he was even born.

  
“Goddamn, good for nothing, defense. Can’t even check the offense,” Dr. Day said, turning abruptly.

  
He was a tall man with dark skin and a small tattoo in the corner of his eye. If Neil didn’t have enhanced vision he may have thought it was a mole. As it were, Dr. Day seemed capable and reasonable for a human. All of his interactions with Neil so far had been perfunctory, which was how Neil preferred them.

  
The second he saw Neil’s face he shrieked and stumbled backwards into the table. He flipped over it and fell on his face.

  
Doing a rudimentary scan Neil determined that he’d broken his nose.

  
“Dr. Day it appears you have a broken bone in your right nostril. Please allow me to assist you to the MedBay.” Neil stepped forward and Dr. Day sprang to his feet, backing against the wall.

  
“Dude, it's just our SecUnit,” Dr. Boyd said. “He’s like five foot nothing and probably twelve years old, what’s your deal?”

  
Neil resented that. He was five foot three and his organic parts were approximately twenty three cycles old, thank you very much.

  
“Nathaniel,” Dr. Day whispered.

  
Neil’s head whipped to look at him, from where he’d been glaring at Dr. Boyd.

  
“What did you call me?”

  
Blood was dripping down Dr. Day’s face and into his mouth. Andrew was twirling a knife and casually maneuvering to stand between Neil and Dr. Day.

  
“Nathaniel Wesninski, son of Nathan Wesninski, the Butcher, and Mary Hatford,” Dr. Day said. His face was getting paler and paler and Neil hoped he didn’t have a concussion. He was spouting nonsense.

  
“Do you know him, Kevin?” Dr. Dobson said, moving around Andrew to place a calming hand on his shoulder.

  
Everyone in the room was watching aptly as Kevin nodded. His teeth were red when he finally explained himself.

  
“His name is Nathaniel Wesninski. I watched him die.”

  
+

  
Everyone was talking at once, but one voice was louder than the rest.

  
“SecUnit’s are cloned from random gene donors,” Dr. Minyard yelled, arms crossed. Apparently believing he’d already eclipsed all other arguments. “Your friend must have donated his DNA, problem solved.”

  
Kevin was shaking his head. He still hadn’t looked away from Neil’s face. “That’s not how SecUnit’s are made, that’s just what they tell you.”

  
“And how would you know?” Dr. Wilds challenged.

  
“Dan,” Dr. Hemmick said softly. “Kevin was raised in The Nest.”

  
The room broke into low murmurs and Dr. Wilds took the opportunity to stride past Andrew, who apparently didn’t consider her a threat, and aggressively poke Dr. Day in the shoulder. Dr. Day was unmoved, instead glaring at Dr. Hemmick who was hiding behind his husband.

  
“You didn’t think to tell us you had a connection to our current employer? We were on the fence about this job to begin with, why didn’t you say anything?”

  
“You could have looked me up on the interwebs,” Kevin said, spluttering, “I wasn’t hiding it, you never even asked.”

  
“I assumed if you were related to the suspected intergalactic crime ring we are currently investigating, you would willingly contribute that information!” Dr. Wilds said.

  
The room fell to a hush. Dr. Wilds turned to spot Neil still standing and watching them.

  
“Oops,” she said.

  
“Now look what you did!”

  
“It’s going to tell the Moriyama's exactly how to kill us!”

  
“I’m too young to die!” That one was Dr. Hemmick. The rest Neil was too tired to properly differentiate.

  
“Dr. Dobson, may I be excused?” he said.

  
Dr. Dobson looked appropriately baffled at his request, but nodded anyways.

  
Neil appreciated that about her. He left to a hubbub of chatter.

  
“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I already scan all files going in and out of our airspace,” Dr. Klose said. Neil could see through the common room’s video feed that he was rubbing Dr. Hemmick’s back. “If he sends a report about this conversation to The Nest, I’ll delete it.”

  
Ha. Even if Neil was sending accurate reports to The Nest, Dr. Klose and his human reaction time would have nothing on Neil’s upload capabilities. It gave Neil something to feel superior about, when all he felt right now was a big, empty, nothing.

  
The past several minutes had been so much for his brain to process. His inorganic parts had recorded the conversation to rewatch in the privacy of his closet, but his organic parts were spinning. This is why humans made terrible security. Neil was only half-human and he’d been compromised by one strange interaction and even while compromised his inorganic parts were checking in with SecSystem, HubSystem and MedBay, rerouting updates to be scanned and surveying the perimeter.

  
If he was human he would be curled in a ball on the floor.

  
He’d nearly reached his closet when a hand came out of nowhere, slamming into the wall by his head. Well, not necessarily nowhere, he had seen Andrew on the feed sneaking down the hall. And he had scanned Andrew’s hand for weapons when he’d thrown it forward. Andrew had three knives sheathed in his inorganic arm, but none drawn.

  
It just sounded better than: Neil let Andrew think he’d snuck up on him in order to appease him.

  
“What’s up?” Neil said. Immediately, he felt so embarrassed that he considered it a miracle his organic flesh could not flush like he’d seen on his soaps.

  
“Do you know Kevin?” Andrew said. “Do not lie to me.”

  
“They wipe me after every mission,” Neil said. Which had been true up until 35,000 hours ago, when he’d hacked his governor module the mind wipes had stopped taking. But it wasn’t a lie by omission if he really didn’t know Kevin. Which he didn’t.

  
Andrew narrowed his eyes at Neil, assessing. He slowly removed his arm from Neil’s path.

  
“If you hurt anyone on my crew, it will be the last time your two measly electrodes rub together.”

  
“Strange metaphor, but understood,” Neil said. He offered his hand, like he’d seen on a recent episode of Eden’s Twilight. “Friends?”

  
“We are not friends, you’ll be lucky if by the end of this you still have all your working parts.” Andrew did not offer his hand, so Neil awkwardly dropped his.

  
“I just want to help them, same as you. I don’t mean you any harm.”

  
“Then prove it,” Andrew said.

  
“How?”

  
“What will you give me?” Andrew challenged.

  
Neil thought about it. Andrew was a strange human, he did not deal in emotion like the others. He dealt in actions, in truth.

  
“How about truth for a truth? I’ll answer a question at a time, while you answer mine,” Neil said.

  
“What could I possibly learn from a SecUnit with no memory past a month ago?” Andrew asked.

  
Neil thought about it and when he came to a conclusion, the answer seemed obvious.

  
“My name is Neil,” he said.

  
Andrew’s eyebrows almost imperceptibly lifted.

  
“I dreamt it and it sounds right,” Neil shrugged. Hopefully Andrew didn’t know that SecUnits weren’t supposed to dream. “What about you?”

  
Andrew’s face turned blank. He crossed his arms, stroking his fingers idly on the sheath of one of his knives.

  
“I protect everyone on this mission. But Kevin and I have a deal, every moment of every day I am his security,” Andrew said.

  
“That sounds exhausting,” Neil said.

  
Andrew’s face twitched in involuntary amusement. Neil knew that’s what it was, because that’s how many people reacted to his comments.

  
Seemingly done with the conversation, Andrew pushed past him and went back the way he came. So dramatic. There was plenty of hallway to walk around him. But Neil was satisfied as well, there were worse ways to get an irascible human security consultant on his side.

  
After a moment, Neil locked himself back in his closet. He sat on the floor and replayed the conversation with Kevin.

  
“Nathaniel,” he said out loud. Yes. That sounded right. That’s what the woman in his dream had called him.

  
He liked Neil better.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the response to the first chapter! i hope you all enjoyed this one! :)
> 
> i will try to update this fic once every 1-2 weeks. i am trying to write ahead right now, so chapter 3 is complete but chapter 4 is only halfway done. i will probably update once i already have a couple more chapters written.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day Neil woke up bright and early and freed his replacement armor. Enough was enough. If the humans could see his face they wouldn’t take him seriously for the rest of their contract. Once he was snug inside his helmet, he felt all of his joints relax like he’d just been freshly oiled. Now, as long as nothing tried to take a bite out of him he should be entirely covered for the remainder of his contract.

  
He reported to the hanger for the survey mission and found that his humans were quieter than normal. They loaded the hopper with supplies. Dr. Dobson was leading this mission, as per usual, and was already prepping for take off in the pilot’s seat. Drs. Wild, Boyd, Minyard, Hemmick, and Day were also in attendance, Andrew was there as well but was standing around leaning against walls, trying to look mysterious and getting in the way of prep.

Dr. Day had been to MedBay last night and had an obtrusive plaster mold on his nose. It made it easier to ignore that he was staring at Neil whenever he was in the room, when Neil could barely make out his eyes past the cast.

  
Neil decided to help Dr. Boyd with the medical supplies and was surprised at how quiet and cooperative he was. Normally, even before Dr. Boyd knew what his face looked like, the man could not stop talking for more than thirty seconds. He was second, behind Dr. Hemmick, in talkativity and humans for Neil to avoid being alone with.

  
But everyone was more reticent this morning.

  
When Dr. Dobson commed him to ask him to co-pilot instead of loading himself into the cargo bay as per protocol, Neil began to wonder if the lack of conversation had something to do with him specifically.

  
He went back in the video feed, scanning for mentions of him, to see if they had talked about him beforehand. They had. It was highly embarrassing. Dr. Dobson had asked them all to play nice and be on their best behavior, as previous loud interactions had “overwhelmed” him. Which was patently untrue. Even if his organic parts were seized in second hand terror and embarrassment at his current predicament, this was why he was outfitted with corresponding inorganic parts. He could still function even if he wanted to hide in his closet until his battery ran out and he rusted to death.

  
Also, apparently this crew was unable to think of another way to be on good behavior besides uncomfortable silence. They were hopeless.

  
As he took his seat by Dr. Dobson, he noticed she thought she was being subtle in looking over at him every now and then. When she wanted to subtly watch people without being noticed she should hack the video feed like he did.

  
They conducted take off efficiently and came to a good height to level off the hopper. Then switched over to autopilot, until they reached their destination. Which is when Neil should have expected she would strike.

  
“So, SecUnit, is there another name I can call you?”

  
Neil took a deep breath. “4678430—”

  
“Not your numeric code,” Dr. Dobson said.

  
Her voice was warm and radiated patience. Neil almost wished these humans knew his governor module was useless, so he could tell them that asking a potential Murderbot to discuss their feelings was such a painful concept that it dropped his efficiency to 97 percent. People were normally scared of SecUnits, terrified that they’d lose control and start killing people at any time. Neil had seen enough of that on his soaps to know it was truth. But these humans kept treating him like a real person, with emotions, and now Dobson was trying to therapize him. Unbelievable.

  
“I am unable to comprehend your request, Dr. Dobson,” Neil said. “But if you wish to call me something other than SecUnit, you may use your own discretion and I will respond.”

  
Dr. Dobson looked back over the planet for a moment. It was quite beautiful. Out of all the hundreds of planets Neil had been on in the last 35,000 hours, this one was memorable. It had an almost endless expanse of trees, leaves of almost every color, bright purple skies that dipped to the edge of an aquamarine ocean. No one had seen Earth, the humans home world, in ten thousand years, but from all the plays and movies and soaps about it, Neil imagined this is what it must have looked like.

  
“We don’t have SecUnits where we come from,” Dr. Dobson said. “We did not want one when we first accepted this mission. Our people believe that the cloning and augmentation that is necessary to create SecUnits is inhumane. Did you know that?”

  
Neil did not. While he was very good at the security aspect of his job, he had been too busy in his downtime watching Exy and other media to delve into the background of this groups home world. And frankly, he did not care where they came from. He didn’t even care about what Dr. Wilds had implied last night, about their true mission. He was curious. He had noted that not reporting the information to The Nest was in direct violation of almost every order he’d been originally been programmed with. But it didn’t matter. In a few months this mission would be over and he would have another group, another assignment. It was better not to get attached. He didn’t even know the name of their homeworld, or their group moniker. He could look it up right this instant, but he still didn’t see the point.

  
Dr. Dobson seemed to take his silence as permission to continue.

  
“We were lucky to get you. We’ve heard stories, other SecUnits who do only what The Nest tells them to. Who observe crises but do not jump in unless given a direct order. When Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Walker were in trouble you didn’t pause. If you had neither would have survived, so I wanted to thank you.”

  
Oops, Neil thought. He supposed he wasn’t being as subtle as he’d assumed.

  
“On Palmetto, if SecUnits come to us they are treated as full citizens,” Dr. Dobson said. “If you prefer another name, we want to call you by it.”

  
Neil, please call me Neil, I think my name was Nathaniel but I can’t remember anything but a woman cradled in my arms, dying, reaching up and cupping my cheek, Neil did not say.

  
He did not say anything at all, because at that moment the hopper lurched forward. The autopilot had turned itself off, the tip of the spacecraft pointed for the trees. Neil reached into the hopper’s controls and steered them back towards the sky.

  
“What was that?” Dr. Hemmick yelled.

  
“Dr. Dobson, autopilot has failed. We will have to manually steer the hopper to our destination.”

  
Dr. Dobson’s lips were a thin line, but she nodded. Her hands were gripping the controls like a vice. Neither of them said another word until they landed at the survey area.

  
+

  
Surveys were usually fairly straightforward. Normally, there were hazard markers that warned the humans of potentially dangerous areas. The scientists would wander around, avoiding danger, and collecting samples, and then they would return to Hub to analyze their findings. Nearly as soon as they landed however, Neil realized that the map of the area that he’d downloaded straight from the Satellite the night before was not the same map his humans had.

  
“Dr. Boyd!” Neil said, sprinting towards him.

  
“Whoa, buddy! You’re really fast,” Dr. Boyd said, he was watching Neil in awe. Which was preferable to him walking the three and a half feet into the designated hazard area and potentially falling through unstable rock into the cavern below.

  
“Dr. Boyd you are dangerously close to the hazard marker,” Neil said.

  
“But there is no hazard marker in my feed,” Dr. Boyd said.

  
Neil took the opportunity to overlay his map with the humans map, where all the hazard markers had been wiped clean.

  
“Another glitch,” Dr. Dobson said, when Neil told her. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. We’ll just have to use our good old-fashioned senses for this survey.”

  
Which is how Neil ended up spending his afternoon shooing humans away from hazard markers they couldn’t see, while Dr. Minyard swore repeatedly and tried to get their scanners to work.

  
Andrew waited in the hopper, apparently considering this danger negligible enough to skirt his duties.

  
By the time Dr. Dobson called them back to the spacecraft, Neil and Dr. Boyd were covered in acidic mud from Dr. Boyd almost being sucked into a sinkhole, Dr. Hemmick was mourning the state of his hair as he’d accidentally been blown several feet by a geyser, and Dr. Reynolds had been laughing at them over the feed for forty-five minutes.

  
They were all ready to go home.

  
No, to the Hub. That’s what he’d meant, the Hub.

  
+

  
They got back to the Hub with no further autopilot issues. However, Neil and Dr. Dobson kept their appendages firmly gripped to the steering controls, just in case.

  
As the humans went off to analyze their data, Neil went back to his closet. He already had an Exy game and the newest episode of Eden’s Twilight queued. Just as he laid down the feed informed him that HubSystem had updates from the Satellite and there was a package for him.

  
He had a trick where he made the HubSystem think he’d received it and then just put it in external storage. Out of paranoia and perhaps laziness, Neil didn’t do automatic updates anymore. Later, he’d go through the files and update what he wanted and discard the rest. Now, there was an Exy game to watch.

  
He was finally settling into the game. Frustration at the USC Trojans defense outprioritzing any lasting unease he’d felt since Drs. Reynolds and Walker had been attacked.

  
It was then that Dr. Dobson commed him. They officially could not contact Binghamton.

  
+

  
When Neil entered the common room the mood was already solemn. Dr. Dobson was making sure the hopper had enough charge to get a group to Binghamton and back without a refuel. Which could only mean they’d assumed the worst about the state of Binghamton’s site.

  
Dr. Klose had an arm wound tightly around Dr. Hemmick’s shoulders, their wedding rings clinked on their intertwined hands. Dr. Hemmick looked the saddest Neil had ever seen him, he wondered if he had friends at the Binghamton site. Or maybe he was just human, with human emotions.

  
“But why haven’t they launched their emergency beacon?” Dr. Wilds was saying.

  
Neil tuned back into the conversation. Sometimes he turned his hearing off when he didn’t care what was going on around him. Humans talked a lot.

  
“Maybe there was a malfunction. Is that known to happen?” Dr. Dobson asked.

  
It took Neil a moment to realize she was speaking to him. Good thing he was listening. He tried to make it seem like he’d been searching the feed.

  
“It’s not common, but malfunctions have been known to occur,” Neil said. Especially if you’ve ticked off The Nest, he didn’t add.

  
Everyone was quiet for a few moments, probably thinking about every single piece of technology in their immediate vicinity whose malfunction could put their entire Hub in jeopardy. Even if the coffee maker broke down, if it sparked a fire it could kill all of them. Not to mention the danger presented by Neil himself.

  
“What about you?” Andrew said, seeming to read Neil’s mind. “Could you malfunction and kill all of us?”

  
“I carefully monitor my own diagnostics,” Neil said.

  
“Yeah, Andrew, he carefully monitors his own diagnostics,” Dr. Boyd echoed. “I bet you can’t say the same.”

  
Andrew looked like he wanted to respond with immediate violence, but Dr. Dobson threw her hands up.

  
“No fighting, we have bigger fish to fry,” she commanded.

  
There weren’t any species of fish on this planet, but it got the others to settle down so Neil let it slide.

  
“In the morning we will travel to Binghamton. It’s a twenty six hour flight, pack the essentials. Drs. Hemmick and Klose will stay and watch after the Hub and our injured crew members. The rest of you, get some rest. If these creatures have infiltrated Binghamton we need to be alert,” Dr. Dobson said.

  
At the end of her instructions the rest of the crew began to head back to their personal cabins, Andrew hovered in the corner and Dr. Day hovered on the other end of the table. Neil had not been dismissed, so he watched Dr. Dobson quietly.

  
“SecUnit, I would like you to stay here tomorrow and watch after the Hub,” she said.

  
“Dr. Dobson, I strongly suggest you reconsider. I am more equipped to handle these kinds of situations than anyone else aboard.”

  
“And what kind of situations are those?” Andrew asked.

  
“Hostiles,” Neil said, clipped.

  
“We don’t know if there are hostiles,” Dr. Dobson said. “For all we know, Binghamton left early and we missed their status report. There have been many glitches.”

  
“Binghamton was on a high priority scavenging mission. They had three times the number of crew we have and four SecUnits. They also had over a hundred donors and three months left in their contract,” Neil said. “There are very few benign reasons they would have abandoned their Hub. I would be more useful if I was there with you.”

  
Dr. Dobson contemplated this in silence, flipping through her data pad, probably trying to look official. But Neil knew she was just deleting spam from her personal inbox.

  
“My decision stands,” Dr. Dobson said. If Neil had a heart it would be frozen. “You will remain here and guard the Hub, SecUnit. Those are my orders.”

  
She left the common room with no more fanfare. Neil watched the door close behind her and almost forgot that this meant he was alone with Dr. Day and Andrew.

  
“Nathaniel…” Dr. Day said.

  
Neil almost shivered at the name. He couldn’t explain why, but he hated it. The sound of the whole thing stretched out on Dr. Day’s tongue felt like a knife being dragged across his skin. Or what was left of it.

  
“That is not my name,” Neil said, glaring at where Dr. Day’s eyes were through his cast.

  
They hadn’t spoken since Dr. Day had claimed he’d known Neil. Whoever Dr. Day had known, he was dead.

  
“Do you remember any of it? Baltimore? Your father? Your—”

  
“Don’t,” Neil said, perhaps a bit too abruptly for a rogue SecUnit attempting to act as a nonhacked SecUnit in front of a client.

  
Dr. Day’s eyes narrowed at him.

  
“Dr. Day, SecUnits organic parts are cloned from voluntary gene donors. If I resemble your friend it’s because he donated his DNA.”

  
Dr. Day’s face could only be described as mulish. He nose wrinkled and his mouth curled into a sneer.

  
“He did not! He couldn’t! He was already a clone!” Dr. Day yelled.

  
Neil was glad for his helmet, just the sound of this man’s voice raised his hackles. He wanted to yell right back, and would have, if it would not have blown his cover. He wished he could grab Kevin by his shoulders and shake him. Dr. Day, he meant, not Kevin.

  
“Nathaniel Wesninski was a clone of his father, Nathan,” Dr. Day said. Neil felt impossible goosebumps rising on his flesh. “Nathan cloned himself in order to have the perfect heir. But you and I know that clones are just people, they are not carbon copies of their original. Nathaniel was different. He didn’t want to kill, he wanted to go to school and make friends and play Exy.”

  
He had good taste, Neil thought absently.

  
“Nathaniel’s mother ran away with him when he was eleven. His father caught him again when he was eighteen. Sold him to The Nest.” Dr. Day paused, licking his lips. His left hand was trembling, Neil noticed it was crosshatched with surgical scars. “After a few months Nathaniel hatched an escape plan. He took me and one of our friends, Jean, with him.

  
“We were caught. Nathaniel sacrificed himself for our safety. They let Jean and I go, but they murdered Nathaniel right in front of us. They cut the tendons in his legs and shot him in the chest.”

  
Neil was hyper aware of every part of his body. From his mechanical knees, calves and feet, to the plating over his chest, to the fleshy bits on his thighs and shoulders and his intact face. Some SecUnits didn’t have faces, they had fully mechanical eyes, no nose, protective plating over their mouths. Neil was always an anomaly when he was back at The Nest. He could pass for an augmented human with his arms and legs covered. The only way to know for sure he was a SecUnit was the port at the back of his neck, for manual uploads. That alone always made him feel the most monstrous.

  
Anyone could reach over and plug him full of orders. He could forget who he was and kill everyone aboard and not even remember why that was regrettable.

  
“That is unfortunate, Dr. Day,” Neil said, he was grateful for the voice replicator he had downloaded recently. His own voice was not reliable at the moment. “If you’ll excuse me I need to recharge.”

  
“Nathaniel— Goddammit, Andrew, get off me!” Dr. Day was yelling in his wake.

  
He didn’t care. He walked swiftly back to his closet, almost making it before Andrew caught up to him.

  
“Did you know any of that?” Andrew said.

  
“Are you taking a turn?” Neil asked.

  
He turned to see Andrew watching him. He wasn’t watching him as aggressively as usual, his arms were crossed and he looked more contemplative than murderous.

  
“I am,” Andrew confirmed. “But, new rule, when we do this you have to take off that ridiculous helmet.”

  
“Why?” Neil almost recoiled.

  
“You can see my face and no doubt analyse if I’m lying using a multitude of lie detectors at your disposal. I want to at least determine for myself if you’re telling the truth. Fairs fair, little fox.”

  
Neil pouted for a moment, while Andrew still couldn’t see. Then sighed and unfastened his helmet. Andrew wasn’t wrong. Neil propped it under an arm and ran a hand through his hair. It was tacky with sweat, something The Nest didn’t seem to realize about their SecUnits was that they were still somewhat human. They still needed to bathe occasionally. All Neil had for his personal hygiene was a decontam wand in his allocated medkit. It would have to do.

  
Andrew gestured for him to answer, so he re-listened to Andrew’s question in his feed. He’d already forgotten what had been asked.

  
“I don’t know what Dr. Day is talking about. None of it is part of my memory. But…” Neil said. He felt vulnerable without his helmet on, he wasn’t good around humans, his face always looked too awkward. “I remember that name he said yesterday. Mary Hatford. She’s the woman from my dream.”

  
Andrew nodded, as if that made any sense at all.

  
“Do you want your turn?” Andrew asked.

  
Neil thought about it for a moment. With everything going, he’d barely given it a second thought. But he was still curious why this group was actually here and why they’d been so panicked yesterday when they’d accidentally revealed their true mission. “What did Dr. Wilds mean yesterday? About you investigating the Moriyamas?”

  
“Just what she said,” Andrew answered. “They’re a well known crime ring. We’re well known representatives of Intergalactic United Space. We are here to see if they’re violating the terms of the IST.”

  
“But not officially,” Neil said.

  
“Of course not, if so we’d be dead,” Andrew said. With that, he went to make his dramatic exit, but Neil had one more thing to ask.

  
“Wait,” Neil said. “I need a favor. Convince Dr. Dobson to bring me with you tomorrow.”

  
Andrew only half-turned to look at Neil. He scanned his face for a moment, before nodding.

  
“If I do, what will you give me?” he asked. It was always give and take with this man.

  
“What do you want?”

  
Andrew shrugged. He began walking back down the hall, calling, “I’ll think of something,” over his shoulder.

  
Satisfied, Neil went back to his closet to recharge. He cleaned his hair and left his helmet off while he slept. It had been a long day. He didn’t dream a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! just so you know, the chapter count may change to 9 or 10 eventually, but definitely no more than that. also prepare yourselves! the next chapter is a doozy lol


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry for the wait! i am attempting to write a couple chapters ahead at the moment, so updates may b more like 2 weeks apart, since work has been so busy. i am almost done w chapter 6. 
> 
> there are content warnings/spoilers in the end notes, nothing too surprising if you have read the tfc trilogy or the tmd novellas, but stay safe! this chapter is kind of heavy

Neil woke bright and early the next morning to a curt message from Dr. Dobson telling him to report to the hanger at 0700 hours. He didn’t know how Andrew had done it but it was done. He was going to Binghamton. 

****

The plan was to manually fly the hopper for the twenty six hour journey in shifts. Even Neil was added to the shift roster, which was new. Usually clients assumed he could stay online for days at a time, acting as their sole pilot and security consult while they fucked about on the spacecraft. Instead he had two cushy two hour shifts with Dr. Boyd as his co-pilot, with the freedom to spend the remainder of the journey doing whatever he desired. So, likely, watching Exy.

****

At least, that’s how Neil imagined this journey when they started out. What he didn’t count on was Dr. Boyd. They were ten minutes into their first shift together when Dr. Boyd caved and tried to start a conversation.

****

“So. We were given to understand that SecUnits didn’t have— emotions,” Dr. Boyd said. Off to a fantastic start. “But clearly you do.”

****

Neil was silent for long enough that he contemplated turning to Dr. Boyd suddenly and pretending his hearing had been offline since the start of their flight. But decided that may be too obviously a lie.

****

“Do you have any hobbies?” Dr. Boyd asked. “Weirdly enough most of the crew used to play Exy at the academy. Back home we play against other crews if we have time. Do you know Exy?”

****

Did Neil know of Exy? Did a black hole exhibit such strong gravitational effects that nothing could escape from inside of it? If Neil didn’t have to pretend to be an obedient SecUnit Dr. Boyd would be in for two solid hours of Exy talk right now, he didn’t even know what kind of bullet he’d missed.

****

“I apologize Dr. Boyd,” Neil said, instead of launching into a tirade about the USC Trojans, “I have not heard of Exy and The Nest prohibits the individual thought required to have ‘hobbies.’ It would endanger our clients to have concerns about anything other than the mission.”

****

It would not, Neil had been watching an Exy finals match in the background this entire time. He was perfectly capable of multitasking. The Nest were just egomaniacal micromanagers.

****

“But,” Dr. Boyd said, his nose wrinkling in distaste, “that’s like, evil, you’re a person. I’m sure you have concerns and feelings all the time.”

****

Oh boy, nope, Neil wasn’t talking about his feelings today. Not happening. He flagged this convo in the video feed and send it to Dr. Dobson.

****

Fifteen seconds later Dr. Dobson entered the cockpit and dismissed Neil from his duties.

****

“Matthew, what did I tell you about pushing the SecUnit before he’s ready?” Dr. Dobson asked once she assumed Neil was out of earshot. He wasn’t. He rarely was.

****

He turned off his hearing and the video feed so he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself any longer.

****

+

****

After his second, last, and thankfully quieter shift piloting the hopper, Neil retreated to the cargo bay when no one was paying attention. He sat on top of a large box of field equipment, his feet dangling and his mind blessedly blank. There were five hours left until they reached Binghamton and everyone was on edge. Neil went through his endless list of scenarios to prepare for once they reached their destination. All of them seemed bleaker than the last.

****

He almost didn’t notice Andrew sitting on the opposite edge of the box. It was dark this high from the floor and there were no cameras providing feed of what was basically the ceiling of the hanger, so Andrew could have gone unnoticed for the entire time Neil sat up there, but for some reason he was smoking a cigarette. Neil’s smoke detectors sensed its fumes and he honed in on Andrew’s location, not even ten feet away. So not only was he giving away his own location but he was making himself more and more susceptible to carcinogens. Which seemed inadvisable.

****

But he wasn’t about to tell Andrew what to do. In fact, he was about to leave when Andrew stubbed out his cigarette and turned to face him.

****

“Does Bee know you’re up here?” he asked.

****

Bee was what Andrew called Dr. Dobson. Neil couldn’t tell if it was because they were close or because disrespect amused him.

****

“Does Dr. Dobson know  _ you’re _ up here?” Neil countered.

****

Andrew shrugged. “I may have techno junk in my brain but I’m not the one with a module controlling my every sneeze.”

****

“SecUnits can’t sneeze,” Neil said. “And I get downtime too. I’m not on call right now.”

****

Andrew snorted. “Even now I bet you’re scanning all security systems, the piloting software, and our personal databases to make sure nothing is awry. You’re programmed six ways to Sunday. You don’t get downtime.”

****

He wasn’t wrong. Neil was currently strangling a rogue string of hack data to death and putting up a better firewall around their inflight computer. But that was pretty relaxing for him.

****

He shrugged.

****

They sat in silence for awhile. Neil didn’t keep track of the time, Dr. Dobson would comm them when they were needed. He watched part of an Exy game, then got bored and started up an old episode of Eden’s Twilight. Halfway through that, Andrew lit up another cigarette and had two more by the time Neil got tired of Eden’s and switched to scanning the satellite for new shows to download.

****

That was when he noticed the satellite feed was inaccessible.  

****

He commed Dr. Dobson immediately.

****

Once the whole crew realized the connection to the satellite was down, there was an impromptu vote as to if they would keep going or turn around.

****

No one asked for Neil’s vote, but he would have preferred these clients be overcautious and head back to Hub. Let someone else check in on Binghamton. Let someone else be the heroes. 

****

“If we were in trouble and no one came to help, how would we feel?” Dr. Wilds proposed.

****

Everyone, stupidly, agreed with her. Unanimously they voted to continue onward.

****

In the aftermath of the vote, Neil and Andrew went to join the others in the crew cabin. Andrew carefully picked his way down to the floor of the cargo bay, he watched Neil jump down and land lightly with disdain. Interesting. Even more interesting was the way Andrew turned to make sure Neil was following as they made the brief journey down the hall.

****

Neil tried not to think about how nice it had been nice to sit in mutual silence with Andrew. Andrew who didn’t expect him to be polite or diplomatic. Andrew who knew more about him than anyone Neil could remember.

****

He tried not to think about it. SecUnits weren’t allowed to want things and even with free will, he doubted Andrew wanted anything to do with him.

****

+

****

When they arrived it was even quieter than Neil had been anticipating. Their initial scans showed no life signs and all designated hoppers dormant in their hangers. Neil instructed Dr. Wilds to land their hopper outside of Binghamton’s perimeter. They needed to be out of range of any hostiles while Neil went in first to secure the area.

****

Dr. Dobson looked ready to put her foot down about not being the first one charging into a potential battle. Humans were strange like that. But Neil cited The Nest protocol and that quieted the lot of them down long enough for Neil to insist he scout ahead of them. 

****

He was fully charged, had a myriad of weapons and even an assortment of drones to send him video of areas outside of his direct eyeline since the video feed here was down. He was ready. And if anything went wrong, his clients would be far behind him, still scouting the treeline by the time he was clearing Binghamton’s Hub. 

****

As he powered up his right arm, so he would have easy weapons access if he was attacked, a hand popped up in front of his face.

****

Andrew gazed at him dispassionately. He would be in the second scouting team with Dr. Dobson, which Neil thought would have satisfied him. But instead he looked bored and unimpressed.

****

“Here,” Andrew said, shoving something at Neil’s chest. 

****

When Neil didn’t grab it, whatever it was, fell to the floor.

****

Andrew didn’t look down and didn’t make a move to pick it up, just turned on his heel and went back to prepping his weapons.

****

Neil looked down and scanned the object before he reached down to grab it. He trusted Andrew, but he still half-expected the man to fry his temporal processor given the chance.

****

It wasn’t an EMP or a grenade. It was a small homing beacon, disguised as a old-fashioned key.

****

“If the comms drop out, we will still be able to find you,” Andrew sent as a delayed message through the feed. “Could always use the spare parts.”

****

Neil sent back a thumbs up. There wasn’t really a good symbol for how much he appreciated the gesture. But it didn’t really matter anyways. If anything happened to him the humans would return to their Hub and The Nest would send a new SecUnit to replace him. They wouldn’t get their security deposit back, but they would otherwise remain unscathed.

****

+

****

As Neil approached Binghamton’s main Hub building, it was hard to remain hopeful about saving anybody. There had been four SecUnit’s at this compound and 27 humans. So far he’d found two SecUnits with their heads separated from their bodies and multiple lacerations to their hard drives and nearly ten organic corpses. Nearly ten because the humans had been so mutilated it was hard for him to determine how many parts he had stumbled across.

****

Whatever had hit them had done so quickly. The SecUnits he’d found had been poised to face an attack from the building, but had been decommissioned too quickly to help. The humans had been slumped over at the compound’s garden, walking between the hanger and the main Hub, and in doorways. None of them had been carrying weapons. As if they’d been startled out of a peaceful routine.

****

Neil hated to be so wildly pessimistic but from his assessment of the wounds and leftover phaser marks and ammo casings he was pretty sure they’d been attacked by the two remaining SecUnits, not the local fauna as they’d feared. Maybe these clients had been horrible, abusive people, who deserved what they’d got. Neil didn’t care. These SecUnits weren’t going to touch  _ his  _ stupid humans. Not while they were still hopeful there could be survivors and would come prancing in at any moment. He could be pessimistic enough for the lot of them if it meant they’d live. These SecUnits were going down.

****

He sent a briefing of his findings to Dr. Dobson. Whose pause in response was significant enough that Neil wondered if she was upset about the bodies. He had not considered that. He scanned her biometrics, her heartbeat was slightly elevated but blood pressure was normal. 

****

When Dr. Dobson responded she was as composed as ever. She was an admirable human.

****

She told Neil to remain where he’d wandered to, the Binghamton Hub’s common area, until Dr. Dobson’s group caught up with him. He responded an affirmative and sent his drones ahead to assess the corridors. He wasn’t letting his humans walk into a trap. Sure enough there were the two SecUnits, in a hallway connected to the common area, crouched and waiting. So predictable. If The Nest spent more money on their SecUnit’s security training modules and less on their spyware maybe they wouldn’t have so many living enemies. 

****

Neil would alter the report to say he’d been attacked while holding his position, later. Right now, he struck. 

****

He leapt out of the hallway firing at their position. 

****

He caught the first one three times in the chest and the second in both knees. They weren’t dead but they were incapacitated. They definitely couldn’t walk themselves to their weapons closet to lick their wounds. And all of their remaining power would be funneled into healing their damaged parts, not firing on his position. 

****

In the meantime they’d both hit Neil with their weapons several times. His shoulder was numb but functional and he was missing a chunk of his back. 

****

This was typically how SecUnits fought each other. No finesse, their fighting modules were crap and all they knew how to do was fire consecutively. They shot at each other and waited to see who died first.

****

Andrew would not be impressed.

****

Neil sent a comm to Dr. Dobson, letting her know he’d been attacked and needed to do a sweep before they could enter the building.

****

He’d barely stood up again before the drone behind him hit the floor, dead. Before he could react something hit him so hard he was on his back, on the floor beside his fizzing drone, systems failing.

****

+

****

The first thing Neil was aware of was that someone had taken his helmet off. Asshole. Knocking a SecUnit unconscious and dragging his limp body to who knows where to either scrap him, rewire his brain circuitry, or enact some other dastardly plan? Standard dick move kind of stuff. Taking a SecUnit’s helmet off to do all this while their unprotected organic face was slack and vulnerable? Downright villainous.

****

Anyways, yeah, whoever had taken his helmet off was also dragging him across the compound. The scariest part was his feed and comms were down, so he couldn’t even tell if he was still at the Binghamton compound or if he’d lost so much time he was already back at The Nest for reconditioning. 

****

Luckily, his olfactory senses were still working, as they were organic, and he could still smell the distinct odor of rotting flesh. So he assumed he was still at Binghamton.

****

Whoever had been dragging him none too gently tossed him onto a flat metal surface. A table? Then they turned him around so he was face down and pressed something against the back of his neck.

****

Neil wanted to scream. To thrash. To look whoever was doing this to him in the eye before he cut them vertically in half. But his systems were still mostly offline. And then there was a stabbing pain at the port at the back of his neck. 

****

Suddenly, his most of his systems were back online. He reached back and grabbed the wrist of whoever was still stabbing him and pulled so they both went tumbling away from the table. Neil wrapped his legs around the person’s waist and raised his arm weapon so it was inches away from the attacker’s face. It was a SecUnit. Which made no sense. There had been four SecUnits at Binghamton, two were dead, two were incapacitated. This one was unharmed with its helmet still intact, staring at Neil. 

****

Neil attempted to fire his weapon, but realized too late that his weapons systems wasn’t responding. The SecUnit flipped them over, straddling Neil and raising its arm weapon to fire. At the last second, Neil shoved the SecUnits arm weapon under the seam of its own helmet. It fell slack on top him and he shoved it away. He allowed himself to relax for a moment. To attempt to contact his humans. 

****

Another SecUnit appeared in the doorway. He tried to shove himself to his feet but he didn’t react fast enough, it was already lifting its weapon. Then it seized up and fell forward. It had a decent hole missing from its back and Dr. Dobson standing behind it, holding a sparking laser drill.

****

“Dr. Dobson, I told you I had to scan the remainder of the compound before—”

****

“Shut up,” Andrew said, appearing behind Dr. Dobson.

****

He reached forward and grabbed Neil’s wrist, tugging him along as they stepped back into the hallway. Both of them were talking to the others through the comms, listening patiently to their status report and instructions for extraction.

****

“There were four SecUnits accounted for before those two attacked me, there could be more,” Neil said. It was all he could seem to think at the moment. With the arm Andrew wasn’t holding he reached back and found something still stuck in his neck port. It could have also been from being shot earlier but he was pretty sure it was the port, jumbling his thoughts and slowing his reaction time. 

****

“That’s why we’re running,” Andrew said.

****

Neil hadn’t known they were running. That was worrisome. He was pretty sure now, what was happening.

****

“Dr. Dobson I need a weapon,” he said.

****

They were exiting the Hub, not fifteen feet from the door sat the hopper, waiting for them with the hatch open. Dr. Boyd stood guard and as soon as he saw them he reached for Neil, to tug him along or carry him or some other humiliating attempt to help. Andrew stepped between them, his grip of Neil’s wrist the only thing Neil was sure of at the moment.

****

“Dr. Dobson, I—” Neil repeated.

****

“You’re missing a hand and a chunk out of your shoulder and back,” Dr. Dobson said. “Sit down, SecUnit.”

****

Oh, so he was. That’s why Andrew’s grip was hard on his wrist and not wandering towards his fingers, they weren’t there. He sat where he was standing, right on the floor of the crew cabin. Andrew crouched beside him.

****

Neil tried to patch into the feed now that he was on the ship but it was no use. The thing in his neck port had been jostled from all the running and was pressing against his data port now. That was probably what the SecUnit had been trying to accomplish. The SecUnits at Binghamton weren’t rogue, pissed off SecUnits, like Neil was. They had been inserted with combat override modules. They were a crude, but scarily effective means to give a SecUnit one or two basic orders, going against security protocol. Orders like “Kill all the humans,” or, “Don’t leave any survivors, not even other SecUnits.”

****

Andrew leaned over Neil. He reached forward and gently lifted the hair from Neil’s eyes without touching his skin. They were all talking over him, Andrew was saying something too, softer than Neil had ever heard him speak.

****

The only one of his humans he didn’t see was Kevin. Where was he? He must have been aboard or else Andrew wouldn’t be beside Neil.

****

Neil couldn’t hear what was happening, didn’t understand, all he knew was, “Dr. Dobson, you have to shut me down.”

****

“What?” Dr. Dobson said, crouching down to look at him. There was a wrinkle between her eyes Neil had never noticed before, maybe he’d put it there. 

****

She was saying something about emergency repairs, getting him to Dr. Minyard. Neil wondered if Andrew was ever jealous Aaron was “Dr. Minyard” and he was just Andrew. Probably not. He probably thought Aaron was a nerd.

****

“The SecUnit, it inserted me with a combat override module. There’s no way of telling what its orders are, but from the casualties at Binghamton they can’t be good.” He paused to see if they’d get to the crux of what he was saying on their own, but from the confused looks on their faces they needed a push. “You have to kill me.”

****

“No,” Dr. Boyd said. He looked close to tears, but maybe that was just Neil’s blurring vision.

****

“We’ll be at the Hub in twenty five hours you dramatic piece of shit,” Andrew said. “I’ll just knock you out until then.”

****

“Now, now, before we get that drastic, Dr. Wilds, you take a look at his port,” Dr. Dobson said.

****

Neil knew even with a missing hand, a fucked up back, and no helmet, once his weapons were online again he could kill everyone on the hopper.

****

While their attention was on Dr. Wilds, he grabbed the hand weapon from Andrew’s holster, pointed it at himself, and pulled the trigger.

****

**PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 10% AND DROPPING**

**SHUT DOWN INITIATED**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS/SPOILERS: Mentions of dead bodies/corpses, body mutilation, injuries including the loss of a limb, violence, weapon/gun violence (specifically neil shoots himself to shut himself down at the very end of this chapter, but he will be okay, as he is a SecUnit and he knows this)
> 
> ok listen,, i'm sry for how this one ended but the next one has the line that is the entire reason i wrote this fic, get ready


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings/spoilers in the end notes.
> 
> an early update! bc i wrote a lot last week lol. i have not had much time or motivation to write this week, so the next update may be delayed. thank you all so much for your response so far! i cannot express enough how much you all should go read the real murderbot diaries! there's way more political intrigue and mystery than i have the patience for! 
> 
> also the chapter count went up! i am writing chapter 8 right now and am unsure if its going to be 9 or 10 chapters total. or 9 chapters, with a bonus epilogue fic. guess we'll find out together!

Neil had been standing in this room for awhile. He couldn’t remember how he got there. A man whose ice blue eyes sent a surge through his sockets had been staring at him when he’d first gained consciousness. His grip on Neil’s shoulder, while not strong enough to make a dent in the inorganic material, would have bruised if he was human. He was pretty sure the man knew that.

****

Now, the man had retreated to watch him from the shadows, like a beast waiting for the kill.

****

When the woman appeared, Neil both knew she had been coming and was surprised. She was shaking and out of breath.

****

She called him something and then grasped his arm. She attempted to tug him from the room but he could not move. Every muscle in his body was seized by an unknown force. Possibly an order he did not remember, that he was still obeying. 

****

The woman raised a hand to his face and slapped him.

****

“Move, Nathaniel,” she said. “We have to leave, what are you waiting for?”

****

Neil’s name was not Nathaniel, but he recognized the name the way one might recognize an old jacket they’d sold or lost or forgotten somewhere.

****

It wasn’t his any longer.

****

“Do you want to get us killed?” the woman said, tugging more fervently at his arm.

****

She didn’t seem to notice the man in the shadows until he stepped forward. She didn’t seem to notice that Neil was inhumanly resisting her attempts to move him. He wasn’t the fragile teenage boy she thought he was, he was a weapon.

****

The woman didn’t make a sound as the man stepped forward. Her eyes widened minutely, her grip on Neil’s arm tightened, her breathing increased but not enough for a human to notice.

****

“Mary, not going to say hello before leaving?” the man said.

****

Mary looked down at Neil, understanding dawning in her eyes. She let go of his arm and tried backing away. There were more men in the doorway that stepped forward to block her path. 

****

“What did you do to him?” she asked.

****

“Killed him. Brought him back. He’s more obedient now, more useful,” the man said, tapping his newly unsheathed axe on Neil’s shoulder. “He can’t run anymore unless I order him to. I should have done this years ago.”

****

The look on Mary’s face was hardening from fear into anger. She should have been scared. She should have tried to run. But maybe she didn’t know how, without him.

****

There was a brief struggle and then Mary was in pieces. Neil crouched beside her, he put her head in his lap. She was still trying to say something, a name, an order, instructions. Her eyes went dark.  

****

The man was cleaning his axe. He was talking to a short man with a number ‘1’ tattooed on his cheek.

****

“I thought you said you ordered him to just stand there, what’s he doing?” the man said.

****

“There must be too much of Nathaniel left,” the tattooed man said, he was sneering. “We’ll wipe him again. Not to worry.”

****

He snapped his fingers and two guards in suits of armor came and lifted Neil at the armpits. As the guards were dragging him away, the two men kept talking.

****

“The wipe and maintenance will take a couple days, we’ll send him behind you to Baltimore,” the tattooed man said.

****

“No need,” the other man said. “Keep him. Consider him payment for luring my wife here. I never want to see that failure’s face again.”

****

Good luck looking in the mirror then, Neil thought. But he didn’t know where that thought came from. 

****

+

****

Neil came back online slower than ever. He remembered what had happened to him in patches. Binghamton. The dead humans and SecUnits. The combat override module. Shooting himself in the chest. 

****

He didn’t shoot himself in the head on purpose. Contrary to popular opinion, the mainframe for a SecUnit wasn’t located where the human brain was. If so, it would be impractical and an unnecessary risk. Anyone that had a handy weapon could sever the head from the body and leave the clients defenseless. No, SecUnits hard drives were scattered at various focal points throughout the body. So if one limb was missing it wouldn’t destroy the entire machine. Neil however, was a bit different, as his overridden governor module was in his head. So he hadn’t shot that part, he didn’t actually want to erase his consciousness. 

****

He shot himself in the chest to buy the humans some time to do that themselves if they had to.

****

Apparently they hadn’t.

****

The combat override module was gone, his systems were refreshed from a backup from before they’d left for Binghamton. Curious as to why he was still inert, Neil scrolled through the video feeds until he found where his body was.

****

He was lying in a bed in MedBay. Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t a human and did not need to take up a valuable patient cot.

****

For some reason all of his humans were hovering around his bedside. Andrew was sitting in a chair beside his head, sharpening his knives. The only person missing was Dr. Day who was sitting beside a stranger’s bed on the other end of the room. The stranger was unconscious and looked severely beaten, his medical records showed he’d experienced blunt force trauma. His breathing and heartbeat were only just returning to normal levels. They’d been so low when they’d found him that their scanners had missed him entirely. Dr. Boyd had uncovered him in one of the rooms at Binghamton’s Hub.

****

Neil was absurdly proud of his humans for rescuing someone.

****

When Neil’s hearing came online, he had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing Dr. Minyard’s voice first.

****

“—so I’ve had HubSystem immobilize it,” he was saying.

****

Oh. Neil supposed that’s why he still couldn’t move. He instructed HubSystem to obey SecSystem and activate Neil’s emergency routine. This was basically like replaying an empty video on loop. The feed that would get sent to The Nest would be a loop of his humans silently circling the room. It also allowed SecSystem to seize control of Neil back from HubSystem. He now had control of his systems, but remained unmoving. He wanted to hear why Dr. Minyard had taken those measures.

****

“He’s a ‘he’ first of all,” Dr. Hemmick was saying.

****

“Aaron, hasn’t he been through enough!” Dr. Boyd protested.

****

“When he shot himself, I froze the download and was able to remove the rogue code,” Dr. Wilds said. “It really isn’t necessary to keep him offline.”

****

The protests continued until Dr. Dobson stood from her chair on the other end of the bed and signaled for silence. She then looked pointedly at Dr. Minyard to explain himself.

****

“I’ve been suspicious of this SecUnit for awhile now. Even before Kevin’s revelation. I know we’ve never interacted with one before, but this one is...odd. With it offline I was able to run some scans on its internal systems. This SecUnit was already a rogue. It has a hacked governor module.”

****

Oh, fuck.

****

Through the video feed, Neil could see all of his humans look around in confusion. All except Andrew who continued to sharpen his knives like his own hearing was turned off. Maybe it was.

****

Dr. Wilds crossed her arms, the set of her jaw told Neil she was ramping up for an argument.

****

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense Aaron,” she said.

****

“Of course it does,” Dr. Minyard said. “It doesn’t have to follow our commands, there’s no control over its behavior. How else do you think its been sabotaging this entire mission?”

****

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dr. Boyd said. “What are you saying?”

****

“I’m saying that this thing,” Dr. Minyard said, jabbing a finger into Neil’s arm. 

****

Ouch, Neil thought absently.

****

“This thing has hacked our HubSystem, our SecSystem, and our hopper with rogue code. It’s been sending strange files to The Nest since we landed. It’s probably why our flora and fauna section was missing in the first place,” Dr. Minyard said. “Ask Erik, I showed him the code and he agrees with me.”

****

Everyone turned to look at Dr. Klose but he was already shaking his head. 

****

“I don’t, actually,” Dr. Klose said.

****

Dr. Minyard’s face was bright red, he looked like he was going to spontaneously combust.

****

“So his governor module isn’t hacked?” Dr. Dobson asked, sounding confused.

****

“No, it’s definitely hacked. The connection is severed enough that the governor can send commands but cannot enforce them. This unit definitely has free will. I just think that since he has been choosing to use his free will to save Allison and Renee, keep our Hub safe, and scout ahead on a dangerous rescue mission, along with who knows what else he’s done for us, that we should afford him some trust,” Dr. Klose said. 

****

“We’ve been continuously sabotaged since we got here. The missing data in the original data packet, the missing hazard markers, the autopilot failing. This unit must be a part of that. Maybe it found out our true reason for being here and told The Nest and they’ve ordered our murders,” Dr. Minyard countered. 

****

“He told us about the combat override module,” Dr. Wilds said. “He ordered us to kill him and when we wouldn’t he tried to use Andrew’s gun to do it himself. Why would he do that if he wanted us dead?”

****

At that remark Neil noticed that Andrew visibly tensed. He was still sharpening his knives, but his shoulders were climbing higher and higher. Neil knew how he felt, all of these humans arguing was grating on his nerves as well. Welp. Gerbil was out of the bag anyways. Or was it a cat? Whatever. 

****

“The company isn’t trying to kill you,” Neil said. He opened his eyes and got to witness all of his humans turn to look at him at once. Their faces varied from relieved to murderous, although thankfully Dr. Minyard was the only one who looked like he might jump across the room and dispossess Neil of his working data chips. He took that for a good sign.

****

Dr. Dobson didn’t appear particularly unruffled as she asked, “SecUnit, how can you be sure?”

****

Neil sighed. He pushed himself up so he was sitting with his back against the headboard. He couldn’t meet Andrew’s eyes without turning his head, so he watched him through the video feed. Andrew was less tense, still sharpening his knives, and glanced at him subtly for a few moments before looking away. Good then. Their deal to trust each other must still be in effect.

****

“If The Nest wanted you dead they would have poisoned your water supply,” Neil said. “Or your air. Or the food they sent you with. They have a different goal here. Combat override modules can only enforce one or two orders, if you still have the one I was implanted with I can scan it and see what my orders would have been.”

****

“We can’t just trust it with the combat override module,” Dr. Minyard practically growled. He’d backed off a little since poking Neil in the arm, but he pointed his finger in Neil’s direction as he made it to the crux of his argument. “This unit has killed before. It killed an innocent woman with an axe.”

****

Neil felt like his head was imploding. He had thought that whole experience was a dream. That it may have actually happened and existed in his files, was nightmarish. It made sense that The Nest blamed him for that murder since the man he’d seen was human. A SecUnit killing a civilian was a foreseen consequence of imperfect technology, a human killing a civilian in Intergalactic United Space was not tolerated. But no matter the semantics of how Neil had been framed. That woman had existed and Neil had stood there and done nothing while she died. 

****

It was hard to breathe, but luckily Neil didn’t have to.

****

“I didn’t kill her, I was ordered to stand in an empty room and act as a lure,” Neil said. “When she arrived a man I don’t know killed her with an axe. After, they implanted me with a new governor module. They said I hadn’t obeyed orders. I hacked it so I would never have to obey orders again.”

****

Neil hadn’t noticed Dr. Day pushing his way through the humans until he was standing by Neil’s bedside. He was pale and sweating. His nose cast was finally off but he now had mottled bruises ringing his eyes. Neil probably looked better than him right now and his poor backup helmet was lost forever, so it was just his limp, awkward fleshy face they were all forced to look at. 

****

“What was the woman’s name?” Dr. Day asked.

****

Neil sighed. Fine. He was done pretending anyways. 

****

“Mary Hatford.”

****

+

****

Dr. Day attempted to pull Neil into his arms, in something that could only be described as a hug. Ugh, gross. Luckily Andrew got between them and pushed Day away. 

****

“Do not touch him,” he said in his most menacing tone.

****

Dr. Minyard stared at his brother with disgust. Great, there were going to be family dramatics now weren’t there. What to do when the illegal augmented human clone of a human doctor who considered each other brothers but almost never spoke fought over a rogue SecUnit?

****

Luckily Dr. Klose broke up Dr. Day and Andrew’s glaring contest, by voicing his own findings.

****

“Unlike Aaron I actually watched the memory-recording in the SecUnits files. I can corroborate his story. It was an incomplete inorganic memory, it looks like The Nest attempted to redact most of it, but his organic logs filled in the blanks over time. He was an unwilling accomplice in Mary Hatford’s murder.”

****

Dr. Minyard turned to him. “The logs say that because that’s what the SecUnit believes. It doesn’t mean he’s actually good.”

****

“If he isn’t, how do you explain Renee and I being alive?” Dr. Reynolds piped in. For the first time, Neil realized her and Dr. Walker were no longer confined to the cots. They were standing beside Dr. Wilds and watching Dr. Minyard with challenge in their eyes. 

****

They looked tired. This is why Neil shouldn’t take up one of these beds, his dumb humans actually needed them to live.

****

He attempted to scoot closer to the edge but Andrew turned and fixed him with a glare. 

****

“Sit,” he said. “Stay.”

****

Neil did as he said, not because he had to, but because if Andrew attempted to stab him he was pretty sure he’d electrocute himself with his impractical old-fashioned steel knives. It was for the good of the team.

****

“SecUnit,” Dr. Dobson said, then, she repeated her question from earlier, even softer than before, “do you have a name?”

****

“No,” Neil said.

****

“It calls itself ‘Neil,’” Dr. Minyard sneered. 

****

“That was private,” Neil snapped. 

****

At his tone, several of the humans looked startled. It was like they’d never heard a SecUnit disrespecting a client before.

****

“You told Andrew,” Dr. Minyard said, if possible, sneering even more. Andrew looked as surprised as Neil felt by this addition, so at least Andrew hadn’t betrayed his trust. “Don’t even try to lie, I know you did, I saw it in your files. If you hurt my brother—”

****

Before Dr. Dobson could attempt to calm Dr. Minyard down, Dr. Klose said, “Aaron, you wanted to know how it was spending it’s time. That was the whole point of this. To make sure it wasn’t outright betraying us to The Nest. Tell them.”

****

Dr. Minyard worked his jaw. His arms were crossed tightly across his chest, like he could make himself even smaller if he squeezed hard enough. Neil didn’t like where this was going.

****

“It’s downloaded seven hundred hours of entertainment since we’ve landed. Some shows, like Eden’s Twilight. Mostly Exy.”

****

“You really are Nathaniel,” Dr. Day said. He looked on the verge of tears. Someone should really give him a helmet, to spare him from having emotions in public. Like Neil was now being forced to.

****

“He’s probably using it to encode data for The Nest, if I could just crack the code I could figure it out,” Dr. Minyard said.

****

“The most recent Trojans game, who got the game winning goal in the last thirty three seconds by rebounding the ball off the ceiling: Alvarez or Rhemann,” Dr. Day said.

****

“It was Jeremy Knox and he rebounded it off the Bearcats backliners helmet. No one has rebounded a goal off the ceiling in a professional game in the last thirty cycles.”

****

“He’s watching them,” Dr. Day said. “Also, it’s actually only been 29 cycles since Abby Winfield bounced the winning goal for the Palmetto Foxes off the ceiling of their home dome.”

****

“So I rounded up, Kevin,” Neil said. “It’s been a long day.”

****

“We’re keeping him,” Dr. Boyd said.

****

The rest of the humans looked unsure, so naturally they turned to Dr. Dobson for guidance. She was quiet and contemplative, watching Neil like he was a math equation she was solving piece by piece. He didn’t like the way she looked at him like she could see everything he’d ever felt.

****

“Neil,” she said, testing his name out. He liked the way she said it, like he was a real person. “Can you keep HubSystem from accessing the video feed in this room?”

****

“I already did,” Neil said. “I have a subroutine that makes the video feed loop when I don’t want to report back to The Nest what’s being discussed.”

****

“Good,” she said. “Without your governor module working you don’t have to obey me, or The Nest, or anybody’s orders. But since you have chosen to help our team, I would like you to remain one of us for the rest of our mission. Once the mission is over, we can discuss what you would like to do.”

****

She tried to look Neil in the eye to make the next part more meaningful or something, but Neil couldn’t do it. He kept staring at the floor, wondering if it was too late to actually go rogue and kill everyone witnessing this bout of emotion.

****

“I promise, Neil. I will not tell anyone anything about your broken governor module. Before or after this mission. You are safe with us,” she said.

****

“Sure,” Neil said. He didn’t know what safe was and he didn’t think he was capable of feeling it.

****

“Now that that’s all settled,” Dr. Hemmick said. “Are we any closer to figuring out who is trying to kill us?”

****

“It’s not The Nest,” Neil said.

****

“It’s not Binghamton, clearly,” Dr. Wilds said.

****

“There aren’t any other scouting teams in this quadrant,” Dr. Boyd said. “Are there?”

****

It was then that something occurred to Neil. “Was Binghamton’s distress beacon triggered?”

****

“We checked when we were looking for you, it was destroyed,” Dr Boyd said, then he added, “There was no reason for the attackers to destroy it if they were allied with The Nest.”

****

“When Dr. Walker and Dr. Reynolds were attacked, HubSystem tried to upload an upgrade packet that I rerouted to my external drive. I haven’t looked at it yet. Once we were back at the Hub I realized that I’d received a command from HubSystem at the time of the attack, that I’d ignored. It was an ‘abort’ command, which didn’t make any sense at the time,” Neil said. “Basically, what I’m saying is that we’re dealing with a group of people who knows where The Nest’s Hubs keep their beacons, how to destroy them, how to infiltrate and send false commands through HubSystem and SecUnits and how to hack the Satellite itself. They also have their own SecUnits to command if the unaccounted for units on Binghamton were any indication. They know The Nest inside and out. They’re either geniuses or defectors.”

****

“If they’re defectors of The Nest, shouldn’t they be on our side?” Dr. Boyd said.

****

There was a long moment of silence. During which Andrew met Neil’s eyes for maybe the first time since he’d come back online. Neil wanted to ask if he’d known when he’d given Neil the key, that Neil would go missing. If he’d been planning on rushing in with Dr. Dobson, drills blazing, to bring Neil home again. Or if him being there was an unfortunate side effect of caring for Dr. Dobson’s safety. Andrew’s eyes seemed to be telling him that he was an idiot, but that didn’t tell Neil anything new.

****

There was a whisper then. Neil, with his advanced hearing, could barely make it out, so none of the humans reacted either. Andrew though, Andrew looked to the corner of the room the same time Neil did. This time, when Neil jumped from the cot, Andrew didn’t stop him. They were both rushing over to where their rescued Binghamton victim was lying. 

****

He was still prone but his fingers were twitching and he was clearly opening his mouth, trying to form words, but couldn’t move his tongue around them. His face was thoroughly bruised, there was barely an inch of skin on him that wasn’t beaten or bloody or a myriad of colors. From the yellowing bruises around his temples, Neil thought it almost appeared like he had been beaten before the attack on Binghamton, healed some, and then was beaten again. Underneath the bruises he looked like the ghost of a person Neil had met before.

****

“Here,” Dr. Day said. Neil didn’t know when he’d rushed over, probably right on Andrew’s heels. He was pressing his hand to the man’s feed so he could message them rather than pushing himself to verbalize his thoughts.

****

“The Butcher,” the man relayed. Which almost whited out Neil’s view screen. “The Butcher did this. He’s coming for me.”

****

“Who are you?” Dr. Wilds said. “You weren’t in Binghamton’s logs, your files were empty.”

****

Dr. Day looked over at Neil, his gaze boring into Neil’s skull. 

****

“You know who he is,” Dr. Day said to him.

****

“Yes,” Neil sighed. He’d hoped he hadn’t, but he did. “His name is Jean Moreau.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You really are Nathaniel,” Dr. Day said. (this is it, this is the reason i wrote this entire damn fic lol)
> 
> WARNINGS/SPOILERS: canonical minor character death, non-graphic axe murder


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! thanks for continuing to read this self-indulgent mess of a fic. this is my favorite chapter.
> 
> i finally finished writing! so i will try to edit and update more frequently. i'm also tinkering with the idea of writing a prequel or sequel fic, probably not any time soon, but maybe at some point!
> 
> as always, warnings/spoilers in the end notes.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dr. Hemmick said. “Hold up. Your friend Jean, who lived a horrible, tragic life with you at The Nest. Who Neil sacrificed himself for. Is Jean Moreau. Husband of the famous, handsome, charming Exy player Jeremy Knox. And you’ve never introduced me.”

****

That, Neil didn’t know. If the situation weren’t so dire he would definitely have several dozen Exy related questions for Jean. Dr. Hemmick looked like he didn’t particularly care that the situation was dire, he was in apoplectics at this betrayal.

****

“He’s on my exceptions list, Kevin,” Dr. Hemmick said. Dr. Klose was attempting to calm him down, to no avail. “You’re supposed to be family, how could you.”

****

“This is exactly why I didn’t introduce you, you ass,” Dr. Day hissed. “They’re my friends and highly respected Exy players, stop objectifying them.”

****

“Nicholas, perhaps you’d better go to the common room,” Dr. Dobson interjected. She then seemed to realize just how many people were crowded in MedBay, hovering over an injured man’s bed. “That goes for the rest of you as well. Neil, Kevin, and I will debrief Jean and inform the team on our next move.”

****

Everyone filed out, Dr. Hemmick morosely holding his husband’s hand. Dr. Minyard hovered for several moments but then followed the rest after a brief but intense staring contest with Andrew. Andrew didn’t move from his post beside Neil at all and Dr. Dobson didn’t seem inclined to argue with him at the moment.

****

“Jean, perhaps you could tell us how you came to be with the Binghamton crew,” Dr. Dobson said.

****

Jean didn’t respond verbally, but again responded through the feed.

****

“I was celebrating my wedding anniversary with my husband on a remote island planet. That’s when the Butcher’s people took me,” Jean took a moment to compose himself. It appeared as if he was in pain, but Neil couldn’t tell if it was emotional or physical. Just in case, he tapped into MedBay’s controls and upped Jean’s painkillers.

****

After a moment, Jean’s shoulders relaxed and he continued.

****

“I didn’t know if Jeremy was hurt or not at first. They took me while we were sleeping and told me they took him too and would kill him if I made any wrong moves. But one night one of my guards was playing a Trojans game on the feed and I saw Jeremy on the court. That’s when I knew he was safe. That night I hacked my cell and escaped in a spare pod.

****

“I tried to fly back home but the pod didn’t have enough fuel. I crash landed near Binghamton’s Hub and they took me in. They treated my wounds and hid me in their MedBay. It’s my fault they’re dead. They’re all dead.”

****

Jean hadn’t been speaking aloud but he was out of breath, as if he had been. Tears rolled down his injured cheeks and his hands curled and uncurled at his sides. As if he was trying to convince himself he could still move his fingers.

****

“It is not your fault Jean,” Dr. Dobson said. “These people that kidnapped you, only they are to blame. We cannot fault you for surviving.”

****

At this she glanced significantly at Neil. It was almost uncanny how she had casually stumbled upon such a heavy-handed metaphor. Neil pointedly looked away, staring at where Andrew’s fingers rested against his hip. Now that he had a hand again, he wanted to hold Andrew’s in a strange, frustrating, helpless kind of way. But that was a human urge. He pushed it to the very back of his brain and tried to smother it with thoughts of Exy and sitcoms and how much he really wanted to be lying on the floor of his weapon’s closet.

****

“They’ll come for you, they’ll kill your whole crew and that will be my fault too,” Jean said. “You have to get out of here and leave me behind.”

****

“Not an option,” Dr. Dobson said, without pause. “Did they say why they took you? Why were they after you in the first place? Kevin said you both escaped The Nest.”

****

She glanced at Kevin, to corroborate, but he was deathly pale and looked like he may vomit at any moment. Neil slyly stepped closer to Andrew.

****

“They let you leave so why were their men trying to get you back?”

****

“The Butcher no longer works for The Nest,” Jean said. “From what I could tell, The Nest screwed him and his people over, took their money and left them for dead. I was meant to be a bargaining chip to get their money back. Kevin and I, we were never really free. If The Nest had a chance to buy either of us back, they’d take it. The Butcher knows this. Nathaniel… he died for nothing.”

****

At this, Kevin, Dr. Dobson, and Andrew all turned to look at Neil. Yes, he understood the irony. There was no need to rub it in his face. Even if he had been Nathaniel, and the chances of that being true were growing larger by the second, he wasn’t Nathaniel any longer. Neil may have possessed what remained of Nathaniel’s organic parts and his apparent love of Exy. But that was all that was left. He was Neil now.

****

Jean, unable to open his eyes or speak with all of his injuries, didn’t have to know that what was left of his friend was watching over him. Neil tried to convey this to Dr. Dobson with his eyes and after a drawn out moment, she seemed to understand.

****

“Thank you for telling us what you could, Jean. For now, you should rest,” Dr. Dobson said. She looked up at her remaining crew, her face was set in a way that Neil knew meant her mind was made up about something.

****

“Bee, you’re not thinking of doing something stupid are you?” Andrew asked. He didn’t sound particularly concerned either way, rather, he seemed aggrieved at having to follow behind her while she did the aforementioned something stupid.

****

“I’m afraid I am, Andrew,” Dr. Dobson said. “We’re not leaving Jean behind or giving him up to his captors. And if we stay here we’re putting a target on our backs. We are going to abandon the Hub.”

****

+

****

“This Butcher dude, he probably didn’t know which site Jean was at when he crash landed. That’s why our mission has been so cursed. His people have probably been messing with the systems of everyone on this planet to weed out their hostage,” Dr. Boyd said.

****

Dr. Boyd and Dr. Minyard were moving essential medical equipment into the hopper. They’d been arguing for twenty minutes.

****

“Yeah and how do we know for sure that thing isn’t working for its father?” Dr. Minyard insisted. He was speaking of Neil, of course. Neil was preparing the spacecraft for launch, sitting in the cockpit, listening to Dr. Minyard’s vitriol through the feed. He could have turned off the audio and listened to an Exy cast instead, but it was probably a good idea to gauge just how little Dr. Minyard trusted him at any given moment.

****

“That’s whack, man,” Dr. Boyd said. Neil concurred. “Why would he help the dude that killed his mother? I mean, my dad’s an ass too. Even if he put some evil programming in my head, which, I can tell you he definitely tried, I wouldn’t help him with shit once I had a choice.”

****

“It’s not you, Boyd! It’s not a person!”

****

“Well not with that attitude, he’s not,” Dr. Boyd said.

****

“Eavesdropping, Neil?” Andrew said, startling Neil as he dropped out of the shadows to sit in the co-pilot seat. “I’m sure if you wanted to be insulted, Aaron would be happy to do it to your face.”

****

Neil hadn’t realized he’d been listening to the feed out loud, not just in his head. These humans had made him soft.

****

It was the first time Neil had seen Andrew since they’d parted in the MedBay. He looked like he hadn’t slept, dark smudges rimmed his eyes and his hands shook minutely. Although he could also just be craving another cigarette.

****

The humans often confused Dr. Minyard and Andrew. He’d seen video of Dr. Wilds speaking with Dr. Minyard for ten minutes about security measures before he had revealed she had the wrong person. Even Nicky, their own cousin, sometimes said the wrong name at first. He’d catch on to his mistake rather quickly, but he often needed to glance and see whose forearms were inorganic before correcting himself.

****

This seemed ridiculous to Neil. Even though he had an advantage as a SecUnit, even if he hadn’t just been listening to Dr. Minyard speaking on the other side of the hopper moments ago, even though one of them was a clone of the other, the disparities in the two were monumental. Admittedly, Neil could usually tell them apart by which one was willing to speak with him, but there were other more glaring differences.

****

Andrew usually arranged his hair messily, as if he’d woken and promptly walked through a wind tunnel before starting his day. He had more freckles, scattered over his cheekbones and the soft curve of his neck. His eyes were the same shade as his brother’s but he had the silver halo the spoke of augments around his irises. The cartilage of his left ear was pierced with an industrial bar, that was almost hidden by his hair, he also had the faint scar of an old eyebrow piercing that he had most likely specifically taken out for this mission.

****

Then there was their body language. Andrew held himself very still during conversations, as if he was hoping he would be forgotten about until he needed to pounce. Dr. Minyard was always pacing, twitching, running his hands through his hair, and picking his nails. There was the smooth skin of Andrew’s forehead compared to Dr. Minyard’s premature wrinkles; he frowned quite a lot. And the knowing glances Andrew was always throwing towards Dr. Dobson, when they thought they couldn’t be seen. Dr. Minyard sometimes behaved as if Dr. Dobson didn’t exist, he never spoke to her unless it was essential to the mission.

****

Neil could go on and on and had when he had a moment to spare. He’d never seen a clone before and he was strangely fascinated. Although, he had a feeling even if Andrew wasn’t a clone he would be intrigued by him. Sometimes it felt like he’d had whole conversations with Andrew until he realized they were just silently standing beside each other.

****

Neil realized that at that very moment Andrew was watching him with a peculiar expression. Oh, right, he’d said something quippy and Neil hadn’t responded. He rewound the video feed from the cockpit to the last thing Andrew had said thirty seven seconds ago.

****

“Your brother doesn’t trust me,” Neil responded. He’d waited too long to be snarky about it.

****

“Aaron doesn’t trust many people,” Andrew said. “And you’re not just a person.”

****

“Do you?”

****

“Trust you?” Andrew said. He kicked his feet onto the control board and crossed his arms over his chest. It was a position that made him appear non threatening, while actually giving him better access to the weapons controls for his forearms. Very smart. “Should I? You’re a rogue SecUnit, with the organic parts of a dead man and inorganic parts created by a psychopathic multimillionaire. We’d be better off scrapping you.”

****

“That’s not what I asked.”

****

“Oh, are you looking for a truth? It’s not your turn,” Andrew said. “And you now owe me two favors by the way. I’m keeping count.”

****

He lit a cigarette. Neil frowned at the smoke wafting towards him, but once the smell settled in the cockpit something inside Neil stilled. He hadn’t been this close to Andrew last time he smoked, not close enough for his organic olfactory senses to take in the nicotine and ash. It was oddly comforting.

****

“I’ll give you this, you are much more interesting now that you're not pretending to be a dollar bin pet robot.”

****

“How so?”

****

“There are parts of your story that don’t add up.”

****

“Add up?” Neil said. “I’m not a math problem.”

****

“But I’ll still solve you,” Andrew said.

****

Why did everyone on this ship want to unravel him?

****

“Okay, ask me a question then. So I can ask mine,” Neil said.

****

“That’s not how it works.” Andrew paused, flicked ash onto the floor at their feet. Dr. Dobson would not be pleased. “I do have a question, but not because you asked for one. I had one already. Have you remembered anything else?”

****

“Bits and pieces,” Neil said. Andrew stirred his hand as if to say, “Go on.”

****

“I had a dream about the night Mary Hatford died.”

****

Neil told him. The room he’d been standing in, the woman running in, the man with the axe. The shorter man with the tattoo. How they’d discussed giving him back to the man with an axe but he’d been deemed a failure. Mind wiped, probably mind wiped again and again and again. But then, only a fully inorganic brain can be permanently wiped.

****

When he was done, Andrew was quiet. He’d finished his cigarette and hadn’t reached for another. Instead he fished a lollipop out of pocket. The wrapper crinkled as he dropped it to the floor and started crunching on the candy mercilessly.

****

Neil decided it was his turn. “When Dr. Minyard said I had hacked my governor module, you weren’t surprised. Why?”

****

“First of all, his name is Aaron.” Andrew corrected him, spinning his chair a little. “You should really knock it off, calling all of them doctors all the time, it will go to their heads.”

****

“But, they _are_ doctors—”

****

“Second of all, I don’t know if you are aware, but typically regular SecUnits don’t go around making deals and telling truths to their Security Consultants. And they don’t dream.”

****

“I thought your people had never worked with a SecUnit before.”

****

“They haven’t,” Andrew said. “They were used as guards when I was in juvie. But you probably knew that from my file.”

****

Neil shook his head. “I never read your entire file. Just the stuff relevant to the mission. I’ve never really read much of any of your files. It seemed invasive.”

****

“You never read them? Isn’t that you’re job?”

****

“I skimmed them.”

****

“Where did Aaron go to medical school? What is Renee’s real name? Do you even know what planet we’re from?”

****

“Uh,” Neil said, at a loss. He could have looked it up in a millisecond, but Andrew would probably know if he cheated.

****

“Oh Neil, Neil, Neil, that was your first mistake in a long line of terrible mistakes,” Andrew said. “We’re Foxes.”

****

He must have meant they were Palmetto Foxes. The planet Palmetto was a small but wealthy rim planet, co-owned by its inhabitants. They divided the work and resources equally among their people. People who called themselves “Foxes,” for the nearly extinct terran mammals that were an invasive species on their planet. Between the breeding and showcasing of the revered foxes, the wealth of natural resources and food exports, and the near perfect year-round weather which brought tourists from all across the galaxy, Palmetto was one of the most troublesome planets to get involved with. Mostly because its people were notoriously good samaritans.

****

They were famous for taking in orphans, refugees, anyone other planets turned away, and giving them food, shelter, resources. They were always looking for the next cause to campaign, the next person to adopt. He should have known they would accept him immediately. They would probably try to take him home as their pet at the end of the mission, so he could “heal” and “find himself” in their sprawling woodland paradise.

****

“Fuck,” Neil said.

****

“Andrew! Nath— Neil! What the hell are you two gabbing about?” Kevin interrupted. He’d stuck his head in the cockpit and was watching them with disdain, especially once he noted the cigarette tossed on the floor. “It’s time for lift off.”

****

Kevin left again in a flurry of noise.

****

Andrew got up to leave, but paused in the doorway. He looked back at Neil, his face blank but his eyes thoughtful.

****

“Do you still have the key?” he asked.

****

Neil nodded, he could feel it tucked inside the plating on his left forearm. The homing beacon was a small and warm against his neural receptors. As soon as Neil had been alone after waking up in MedBay he’d checked that it was still intact. He was glad he’d placed it inside his own limb instead of in his lost armor.

****

“Good, keep it with you and you’ll only owe me one more favor,” Andrew said.

****

In the distance they could hear Kevin loudly exclaiming about their fuel reserves and Dr. Dobson, the loudest Neil had ever heard her speak, attempting to calm him.

****

“Have fun with Bee,” Andrew said, lips twitching. He saluted Neil as he left to take his seat. Because he was an asshole.

****

+

****

Lift off was complicated by having to manually navigate the hopper around a large clearing just outside the Hub’s SecSystem which had been part of the aforementioned deleted flora and fauna report. They were unspeakably lucky they hadn’t had issues coming and going before receiving the full report. After, they coasted for an hour or so, which was pleasantly quiet besides Dr. Dobson’s occasional firm commands and questions on their direction, elevation, and flight status.

****

Neil was startled out his thoughts by Dr. Dobson pointing towards a sheer cliff face and directing him to land the hopper in its shadow. They weren’t as far from Hub as he would have liked, but Dr. Dobson wanted a spot close by enough to still occasionally do reconnaissance, so they could monitor if the Butcher decided to swing by.

****

And it wasn’t like they could leave the planet altogether. Not if the Butcher had control of the Satellite.

****

They’d stuck the landing and were unbuckling their seats when it occurred to Neil to apologize. Perhaps Dr. Dobson’s silence during their flight hadn’t been a comfortable, mutual thing, but fraught with tension because she was angry at having to abandon the Hub. How was Neil supposed to know? He was a SecUnit. And despite not wanting to be therapized or adopted like a stray animal, he did respect Dr. Dobson and he regretted if he had at all inconvenienced their mission with unrelated dramatics.

****

He said as much to Dr. Dobson before she could leave the cockpit.

****

She took her seat at the helm again, her expression thoughtful.

****

“What makes you think that this situation is your fault?” she asked.

****

“I’m a SecUnit,” Neil said. When she said nothing, he continued, “I’m meant to see the danger in any situation. I should have noticed the flora and fauna section was missing to begin with. And since then I haven’t been able to foresee or prevent attacks from hostiles. It is my job to protect this crew, but I may be putting you all in more danger just by being here.”

****

He paused, Dr. Dobson looked neither upset or vindicated. She still looked deep in thought.

****

“You’re supposed to be here investigating The Nest and now you’ve had to abandon your mission early,” Neil said. “That is mostly what I meant to apologize for.”

****

“When we first arrived here and you joined us, do you remember the first thing you did?” Dr. Dobson asked.

****

Neil shook his head, he could have gone back in his archives to watch it, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t see what Dr. Dobson had.

****

“We hadn’t worked with a SecUnit before but we turned down three before you came along. When you arrived, Andrew threatened you. He pressed a knife to your throat. The three SecUnit’s that came before you, when he did that to them, they’d gone on high alert and attempted to restrain him. Which was not a good idea, I must say,” Dr. Dobson said.

****

Neil nodded, that was quite foolish.

****

“We were lucky we didn’t have to pay any extraneous maintenance fees. Anyways. When he did that to you, you laughed,” Dr. Dobson said, appearing amused. “You told Andrew it was ‘Pleasing that one of your clients knew how to disable a SecUnit should it become a necessity.’ I was honestly surprised Andrew didn’t stab you out of pure shock.”

****

For some reason, Neil felt inextricably embarrassed, as if Dr. Dobson was informing him she’d seen him lying shirtless in his weapons closet, scratching his navel and watching Exy. Which wasn’t something he had done since his clients had decided to start dropping by his weapons closet like it was a human dorm room.

****

“Anyways,” Dr. Dobson said. “You’ve taught all of us a lot. You have protected and served us as well as any human Security Consultant. You’ve lost limbs for us, for galaxy’s sake. You’ve done quite enough. And, not for nothing, but my team has proved The Nest is breaking the conditions set by Intergalactic Space Treaty. I’d say the murdered, reanimated, and nonconsensually augmented SecUnit we’ve befriended is more than enough evidence of that. Even if we didn’t have another former hostage in our MedBay, wouldn’t you say?”

****

Neil felt as if he’d been punched in the cervix. But he was fairly certain Dr. Dobson would not attempt to physically incapacitate him. He rolled back the video feed just to be sure.

****

“Get some rest, crewmen,” Dr. Dobson said, patting him on the shoulder on her way out.

****

Neil watched her go and couldn’t decide if he felt better or worse than before.

****

+

****

The next week or so went by in a blur of chores and conversation. The Foxes kept finding him hiding all over the hopper—there weren’t any fantastic hiding spots now that they were all crammed onto the smallish spacecraft all hours of the day for days on end—and dragging him into debates.

****

Neil learned that they loved placing bets. There were several on whether or not Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Walker were together physically yet, there was one on whether or not Dr. Minyard had was a real doctor, and another on what would make Dr. Hemmick burst into tears next. Neil definitively knew the answers to all of these questions (No, Kind of, and Dr. Klose’s biceps), but he found the practice an abnormal invasion of privacy and tried to keep out the betting pools constantly swirling around the team.

****

Dr. Hemmick, who insisted Neil call him Nicky, learned that Neil enjoyed Eden’s Twilight on their third day in the hopper. He spent forty five minutes trying to convince Neil that the character, a bartender named Roland, was in love with the enigmatic stranger he occasionally hooked up with on Friday nights. Neil was adamant that Roland was pining for his childhood friend that lived in Germany.

****

Eventually Dr. Boyd was dragged into the debate, sided with Neil, and then bullied Neil into calling him ‘Matt.’ Neil wasn’t sure what their obsession with nicknames was about. The only interesting part of that entire discussion was when Nicky confided in Neil that Andrew insisted he didn’t watch Eden’s Twilight, but did and had a crush on Roland. Neil filed that away for blackmail material at a later date.

****

The days blurred together as they were filled with discussion of soap operas, dodging bets, and watching in horror as a hopeful Kevin attempted to lure him into conversation about the USC Trojans season so far. Jean Moreau was recovering in strides and had taken to walking the ten feet from the makeshift MedBay to the window in the common area twice a day, so Neil avoided him like he was an EMP grenade. The best part of his day was finding quiet moments to sit with Andrew while he smoked.

****

After standing around with hordes of Foxes and being asked for his opinion on every mundane thing under the sun, he’d find Andrew and they’d sit in silence. Or, like tonight, they’d argue about nothing in particular.

****

“If they were introducing gases that controlled minds through the air filtration system of a colony, the only reasonable way to escape would be a moon suit to a ship docked off-planet,” Neil insisted.

****

“That’s where you’re wrong scrap metal, a hopper would be. A hopper would have better jump capabilities, food, and a longer range communication system to call for help.” Andrew was munching another lollipop. He hadn’t lit a cigarette yet, but he was on his second candy and his lips were purple.

****

“But a hopper would also take longer to filter out the toxic gases than a moon suit,” Neil said. “You would have to be locked in the hopper for upwards of 48 hours before you even realized something had been wrong before you boarded.”

****

Andrew shrugged. “It’s still better than trying to leave a gravitational field in a sole moon suit.”

****

“Are you not having a cigarette?” Neil asked, before he could stop himself.

****

Andrew looked vaguely caught off-guard, as if he’d had the next perfect argument for whatever Neil had said right on the tip of his tongue and was now left bereft of words.

****

“No,” he said, unwrapping another lollipop, this time green, and shoving it in his mouth, “I had one this morning, I’m trying to quit.”

****

“Oh,” Neil said. “Why?”

****

“Usually people say ‘good for you, maybe you won’t get lung cancer,’” Andrew scoffed. But Neil was still looking at him with curiosity so he sighed and answered, as he always did, “Aaron claimed I couldn’t do it.”

****

“You realize he was tricking you, right?” Neil asked, unsure.

****

“Yes, I am not actually a toddler. If I quit he’s going to propose to his girlfriend. I made a deal with him, so he couldn’t find another chickenshit excuse not to do it,” Andrew said.

****

Neil scrunched his nose in distaste. “Gross. Who would want to date Dr. Minyard?”

****

“A literal saint,” Andrew said, swirling his lollipop stick around his mouth. “She’s a surgeon back on Palmetto. They met in college.”

****

Neil hummed in acknowledgement and they lapsed into a silence

****

Since they boarded the hopper, they’d stopped keeping track of their truths. Neil couldn’t count how many questions Andrew had answered honestly at this point, nor the answers Neil had given back. He didn’t know whose turn it was or if one of them owed more to the other. They’d reached an odd sort of trust. But there was still something Neil was curious about.

****

He debated the merits of asking for a few moments, studying the way Andrew folded the wrapper of his lollipop into a small boat. He had thin, nimble fingers, and scarred knuckles. When he asked the question he didn't realize, for a moment, that he had said it aloud. So invested in watching Andrew sail his small boat across the palm of his hand. He didn’t realize he’d asked the question until Andrew crushed the boat in his fist, knuckles turning abruptly white.

****

“Why haven’t you kissed me, yet?” Neil had asked.

****

It was a fair question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS/SPOILERS: Discussion of abduction, torture, and murder of the Binghamton crew.
> 
> also i won't be going into this in detail in the fic itself, but in case any of you are confused, jeremy was playing exy because he was hoping jean would see him on TV. he managed to escape the night jean was abducted and had a feeling they would use him as leverage to manipulate jean, from jean's stories of the nest. so he thought if he continued to play exy that might help!! 
> 
> thanks, as always, for reading <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're reaching the end here folks!! hope you enjoy!!
> 
> warnings/spoilers in the end notes

“Why haven’t you kissed me, yet?” Neil asked.

****

He had the pleasure of seeing Andrew nearly choke on the stick of his lollipop. His lips were a purple-y brown and they looked sticky. That didn’t make his glare any less threatening. He dropped his crushed plastic boat to the floor.

****

“What makes you think I want to?” Andrew said, he threw the words at Neil like a challenge.

****

“That’s what humans do isn’t it? When they like each other,” Neil said.

****

“It’s not always that kind of ‘like,’” Andrew said.

****

Neil merely raised an eyebrow and held Andrew’s dark glare until the aggression seeped out of it. Once Andrew’s eyes had resumed their usual careful blankness, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the box of equipment they were hiding behind.

****

“Kevin gave me the shovel talk a couple weeks ago,” Andrew said. “He told me you don’t swing.”

****

Neil felt a flash of irritation. He found Kevin in what served as the hopper’s kitchen, boiling a pot of tea at exactly 170 degrees. He upped the temperature to 300 without affecting the display and set the kitchen video feed to record in exactly thirty seconds, when the tea was supposed to be finished. 

****

“But you want to kiss me,” Neil said. “I have cross examined your body language and facial expressions with over 245 love interests in the soap operas accessible through the satellite.”

****

“I will not force you to do something you don’t consent to,” Andrew said, his jaw tightening. “People are attracted to people who don’t reciprocate all the time. These feelings will fade. It doesn’t affect the mission.”

****

He moved to push past Neil and exit their spot in the hanger. Neil didn’t want to touch him, especially not to stop him from leaving if that’s what he really desired, but he said “Wait” softly enough that Andrew could pretend he hadn’t heard if he wanted.

****

Andrew stopped, he was standing in a patch of light streaming from an open skylight. It made his entire countenance appear gold, from the soft tufts of hair on his head, down to the exposed strips of his shoulders. His forearms gleamed silver as he pushed his hands into his pockets. He looked like something out of a television show. Maybe even now Neil was imagining him. Maybe he’d seen Andrew in an Exy game or a soap opera and transposed him over his world. Maybe he only existed in Neil’s head. Stranger things had happened to him.

****

“I don’t swing usually, I think,” Neil said. “I don’t really know. I haven’t had much time to think about it since I’ve regained control of my systems. All I know is that, if you want to kiss me I want to kiss you too.”

****

“Are you sure?” Andrew said. Something about his posture had loosened, but Neil couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.

****

“I wouldn’t lie to you about this,” Neil said.

****

Andrew stepped closer. In another room Kevin had burned his hands on the kettle, dropped it, and shattered the full container of scalding water on two other crew members. The video pinged into Neil’s inbox to watch later. Andrew took another step closer, there were inches between them, he put an arm above the box behind Neil’s head.

****

Anyone else might have caged Neil in, but Andrew left a wide gap for Neil to step out of the position if he desired. He did not desire.

****

He hadn’t been positive of what he felt for Andrew so he’d shoved it to the back of his mind. A subroutine took care of the research for him, while his major systems handled the dilemmas they were facing. Every once in awhile his subroutine would ping him with its progress, but it was never enough for Neil to act on or really look into what he was feeling. This morning it had sent him its full report, complete with video and audio clips of Andrew holding his wrist, giving him a key, talking to him while he was unconscious in the MedBay, standing by his side while the crew doubted him. And he was decided. 

****

Andrew’s face was getting closer, Neil realized he probably should have looked up an educational sim on kissing. But it was too late for that, he tilted his head and—

****

“I knew it.”

****

Andrew and Neil whipped their heads around to see Dr. Minyard—fuck it, Aaron—standing at the end of the aisle where they’d been hiding. His arms were crossed over his chest and his face was a glower. It would have been an impressive glower, had not Andrew also been doing his best glowering with an identical face.

****

They all watched one another in silence for a moment before Aaron said, “The SecUnit and I are on recon duty.”

****

Reluctantly Andrew pulled away from Neil. His fingers quivered, as if wanting to reach for a cigarette. But he couldn’t in front of Aaron. Neil procured a candy bar from the emergency compartment in his arm and Andrew took it wordlessly before turning his back on both of them.

****

“Get a move on,” Aaron said, watching to make sure Neil was moving away from Andrew before following.

****

The disappointment swelled into a lump in Neil’s stomach. He fervently wished Aaron would betray them all so he could shove him out of an airlock and be done with him.

****

+

****

There was a little hopper inside the hopper, a pod really, that didn’t have the capability to leave a planet’s orbit or fly long distances but was useful for scouting missions, that the Foxes had been using in shifts to scout the Hub. 

****

Neil did his usual preflight maintenance, checking and double-checking the little hopper’s power cells, scanning the firewall for unchecked malware. Over the comm Dr. Dobson offered up Matt to replace Aaron on this scouting mission, probably sensing the tension rolling off the two of them as they circled each other, getting the little hopper ready. But Neil told her it was fine. Matt might make Neil talk about his feelings. At least, if Aaron made him talk about feelings it would most likely be of the threats to his life variety. That, Neil could handle.

****

Almost everyone on the hopper was asleep by the time the little hopper reached the edge of the Hub’s SecSystem barrier. The feed was muted, but Neil knew only Andrew and Dr. Dobson were standing by in case they needed backup. Andrew had pinged him during take off, to make sure his key was charged and his homing beacon wasn’t in danger of dying. Neil had recharged and sent back a thumbs up emoji.

****

Now he had been sitting in silence for close to sixty minutes with a surly Aaron. Neil suppressed a sigh and went about checking the Hub for signs of intrusion. 

****

“I have a question,” Aaron said, after sixty four minutes and fourteen seconds of silence.

****

After a long moment of continued silence Neil realized Aaron was waiting for permission, that was almost concerning in its consideration. Neil thought about ignoring him, but his curiosity won out in the end. He nodded in assent. 

****

“Do you remember your mother?” Aaron asked.

****

That was surprising. Neil had been perfecting a plethora of answers for any combination of questions Aaron could have asked him. This had not been foreseen.

****

“I’m not sure,” Neil said, honestly. He was not as proficient at lying these days, as he had been. Most likely, this was Andrew’s fault. The truth would have to be good enough. “I remember a woman, running into a room to save me. It was a trap. Someone must have ordered me not to move because I couldn’t stop the man from cutting her to pieces.”

****

Aaron winced, his eyes were focused on his lap. Neil couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

****

“Some other things have been coming back,” Neil admitted. “She liked to smoke. She hated Exy. I think she hit me, when I didn’t do as she said. I loved her, but I also didn’t have anyone else. Does that answer your question?”

****

“I suppose,” Aaron said. “Do you blame humans, for what happened to you?”

****

“No,” Neil said. He didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Aaron was the only one among the crew, including Andrew, who consistently acknowledged that Neil was not human. It stemmed from a place of hatred, but he wasn’t wrong. And while Neil didn’t appreciate being misgendered or treated like he was lesser than the humans on the crew, he was relieved that at least one person could look at him and see him for what he was; instead of labelling him “human” as if that was the only being of sentience that was worth anything. 

****

“I don’t blame anyone. That’s a human thing to do. I have bigger things to worry about,” Neil said, eventually.

****

Aaron reverted to silence for so long that Neil assumed their conversation was over. But it seemed he had one more thing to make clear.

****

“My brother has been hurt before, by people he’s trusted,” Aaron said. “Everyone thinks he doesn’t feel anything, but he feels too much. If you hurt him, you better make sure it’s the last thing you ever do, because I will find you and end you.”

****

Neil turned to look at Aaron. For once in his entire profession, he was glad to be without his helmet. He looked Aaron in the eye and said, “Understood.”

****

Something slotted to place in Aaron’s eyes: sympathy or understanding, Neil wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to know what they had in common that had sparked that emotion. He looked away, out over the Hub. That was when he noticed the spacecraft headed their way. 

****

Neil alerted the hopper that there was a hostile approaching and that the little hopper would be going dark until the danger had passed. He paused long enough between the transmission and actually turning off the little hopper’s communication systems, that he heard Andrew patching through to say, “Neil, I will strangle—” and then the comm was down and Neil couldn’t turn it back on without alerting every open channel in the vicinity. Oops.

****

“He’s going to murder you,” Aaron said.

****

“He’ll have to get in line,” Neil said, knowing very well that Andrew was fully capable of murdering the entire line and then Neil himself if incensed. He was a remarkable human.

****

But there was no time to think of impressive feats of murderous rage at the moment, the spacecraft was setting down at the Hub. They had managed to take down the barrier without pausing their arrival and Neil took a moment to mourn the usually reliable but currently thoroughly shattered SecSystem. It would regenerate, but that would take hours if not days. 

****

Neil sent a drone to scan the spacecraft so they could get an idea of the specs.

****

The video feed sent by drones Neil had left circling the Hub were the only visual Neil and Aaron had on the ground. Their vessel was hidden in the forestation surrounding what had been the Hub’s barrier. The drones cameras were small and only got a full picture after splicing all of their feeds together. So it took them a moment to realize just how many SecUnits the Butcher had come with. 

****

And it was indeed the Butcher. It was the man from Neil’s dream, complete with an axe at his side and a crazed smile. He surveyed the area, comfortable under the watch of his ten SecUnits and three augmented human companions. 

****

“You do look like him,” Aaron said. His voice, broke through a thick silence Neil hadn’t known existed until it was gone. They’d both been barely breathing. “But your coloring is different.”

****

Neil reached up and touched his hair, it was SecUnit regulation short and dark brown. His eyes were brown, too. If he was meant to be a clone of the man currently strolling around their Hub like he owned it, he was a poor imitation. 

****

“Kevin didn’t say anything about that,” Neil said. 

****

Aaron shrugged. “Maybe you changed it before they turned you. Kevin might have known you better looking like this. I certainly wouldn’t want to look like that monster.”

****

Neil agreed. 

****

They continued to watch in silence for awhile, as the Butcher’s team strolled around the Hub. The drones couldn’t follow them inside, lest they’d be detected, so once they wandered out of sight Neil and Aaron got by just watching the comm, waiting for one of them to slip up and use a public channel.

****

Then, Neil received an upload communication from a drone Neil had assumed was dead inside the Hub. He told Aaron to be on high alert, in case there was a virus, and began uploading the file. 

****

It was a short video, he played it on the ship’s display. The camera was aimed at the intruders feet, but the audio was clear as a bell.

****

“You knew we were coming so you most likely have what we’re after,” the Butcher said. It was the same voice from Neil’s dream, so familiar and chilling that Neil turned to make sure Aaron could hear it too and it wasn’t just in his head.

****

“We’ve destroyed your beacon and we have taken over the satellite. If you leave orbit, we’ll hunt you down and destroy you. If you try to bypass the satellite to call for help, we’ll hunt you down and destroy you. Come to the coordinates at the end of this message at noon tomorrow and bring us Moreau. You do not get a second choice.” The message cut off after a woman’s voice, that sent a series of goosebumps rolling down Neil’s fleshy bits, recited a series of longitudes and latitudes. Luckily, Neil’s drones triangulated their whereabouts because Neil was no longer aboard the hopper.

****

He was on the floor, held down with a knee to his chest. The augmented woman he’d seen with the Butcher earlier, only this time she was just a regular human, was using a knife to flay the skin from his stomach. The door opened and it was Mary. She would save him, she would—

****

“What are you doing?” Mary said, tone flat, seemingly unconcerned. 

****

“Junior here fidgeted at lunch, fidget, fidget, fidget, every time that cop asked a pointed question,” the woman said. She stroked her knife across Neil’s face, leaving behind a warm trail of blood. “He needs to be taught a lesson.”

****

“Alright,” Mary said, she was closing the door behind her, why was she leaving, she couldn’t just leave him— She paused. “We have someplace to be in thirty minutes, make sure he’s ready. With no blood stains this time, Lola.”

****

She closed the door behind her with a thump. Lola’s eyes burned into his as she smiled down at him. “I think there’s a lot we could get done in thirty minutes, don’t you Junior?”

****

He started screaming.

****

+

****

“Neil,  _ Neil _ !” 

****

Right, his name was Neil. Not Nathaniel. Not Junior. Neil.

****

There was a hand on his shoulder. He was on the ground, he realized, in the fetal position between the pilot and co-pilot seats of the little hopper. 

****

He opened his eyes and looked up. Andrew? No, Aaron. 

****

He sat up, knocking Aaron’s hand from his shoulder. He checked his logs. He’d been out of commission for five minutes and forty five seconds, unacceptable. He stood and took his seat in the pilot’s chair. He did a full systems check. All online. Drones all accounted for. The Butcher and his men had left the Hub thirty seconds ago, headed due east. They would be out of range in thirty more seconds and he could reactivate comms and update Dr. Dobson and Andrew.

****

Andrew.

****

“Neil, what just happened?” Aaron demanded. He was in the co-pilot chair but sideways, facing Neil with a furious look on his face.

****

Damn. He didn’t think Neil was a threat  _ again  _ did he?

****

“That was a panic attack wrapped in a flashback wrapped in a mental breakdown,” Aaron said. “What triggered it?”

****

Neil didn’t know what he wanted him to say. That woman’s voice. The Butcher. A past Neil didn’t remember or care to remember, but that haunted him anyway.

****

The Butcher was out of range, they could activate comms again. Neil sat in the pilot’s chair and did absolutely nothing for fifty five seconds.

****

“I remembered something,” Neil said.

****

Aaron was silent, waiting.

****

“I don’t want to remember anything else like that and compromise the mission,” Neil said. “But I don’t know how to turn off my organic memories. I don’t think it’s possible.”

****

“Okay,” Aaron said, nodding. He took out his data pad. “I’ll think of something.”

****

“You’re helping me? Why?” Neil asked. 

****

Aaron looked up, he was already writing a complicated code onto a fresh note in his pad. The algorithms hurt Neil’s head even to look at.

****

“Because we’re on the same team,” Aaron said. “Now call Andrew, he’s probably a hare’s breath from hiking through the alien wilderness to our location.”

****

Neil called Andrew. Aaron hadn’t been far off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS/SPOILERS: A flashback/panic attack of knife-related torture. Lola is involved. Nothing graphic.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will probably post the last chapter and the epilogue in the next couple of days! if the chapter count goes up to 10, its because i posted the epilogue separately. thank you all for reading and leaving comments/kudos. i never write fic this fast but i was definitely spurred on by your enthusiasm! i hope you enjoy this climactic chapter!
> 
> warnings/spoilers in the end notes.

When Aaron and Neil returned to the hopper and relayed what they’d discovered to the team, there was a lot of talking and opinions and loud statements and eventually Neil turned his hearing off. 

****

If he was still pretending to be an uncompromised SecUnit, he would have shoved all of his misgivings into a box in his inorganic brain and detonated it. But the crew did know. The jig was up. He didn’t have to jump through a dozen video feeds to make sure he was behaving like a good pet robot.

****

Andrew had been waiting at the foot of the little hopper’s ramp when they arrived. He hadn’t touched Neil or said a word, but he’d been a steady presence and he was sure to catch Neil up on what he missed. Neil couldn’t be here right now, he didn’t trust himself to not have another flashback. And a flashback in front of the entire team could be catastrophic to their mission. He was their big bad SecUnit. He was supposed to be unstoppable. 

****

Andrew wound his hand around the back of Neil’s neck, covering his port. For some reason, that was the most comforting thing he could have done. His port was covered, he was safe on the hopper, nothing could hurt him. He started to breathe again. Even though it wasn’t necessary, all this not breathing was still unsettling.

****

Before he knew it, his head was in between his knees, his hands were on his thighs, and Andrew’s hand was a firm shroud on his port, and he was calm again. 

****

When he looked up, only Andrew and Dr. Dobson were left in the common room. The others must have dispersed to argue elsewhere, because Neil could still hear them bickering, but distantly.

****

“Hot chocolate?” Dr. Dobson offered. 

****

He shook his head. She made some for Andrew and herself and settled a cold water at Neil’s side. He wondered if she knew for sure that he could drink water, or if she was just being polite. 

****

“What are we going to do?” Neil asked, too tired to even rewind the video feed.

****

“We’re going to the rendezvous point,” Dr. Dobson said. “We don’t have another choice.”

****

“But do you have a plan?”

****

Dr. Dobson and Andrew shared a significant look. Neil was a little miffed that they thought he couldn’t interpret the blatant lack of a plan on their faces. 

****

“We can’t bring Moreau with us, we will go to the rendezvous point and attempt a compromise,” Dr. Dobson said.

****

“Compromise? What you want is to escape the planet with their captive and your crew alive. What they want is Moreau, captured, and the rest of us, dead,” Neil said. “There is no compromise.”

****

“Well we can’t exactly fight them,” Dr. Dobson said. “The scans you sent of their ship show that its a war vessel. Its armed to the teeth. We could probably outrun it, since we’re a lighter craft, but we wouldn’t even get a headstart before it shot us out of the sky.”

****

Neil pondered this for a moment. Andrew’s hand was still steady on his neck. He hadn’t offered any alternatives to showing up and attempting a compromise, but Neil couldn’t imagine Andrew was all that invested in talking things out. He probably anticipated showing up and attacking once Dr. Dobson’s plan went south.

****

That scenario could only end up with most of them dead.

****

Neil sighed. “I have a plan. But it’s terrible and might get us killed instead of them.”

****

Dr. Dobson’s smile turned wry. “Those are the best kind.”

****

+

****

Two hours before the rendezvous point, Aaron accosted Neil in the hanger while he was sitting with his head on Andrew’s shoulder. Neil, who had been watching an Exy game and mostly offline, had to quell the urge to attack Aaron when he came around the corner unexpectedly. Andrew must have as well, if the knife he’d half unsheathed was any indication.

****

“You two are so tense,” Aaron said. Before Neil could protest Aaron sent him a file from his data pad, it sat in Neil’s queue downloading quietly while Neil raised an eyebrow at Aaron to explain.

****

“I’ve finished what you asked for. It’s a rudimentary fire wall and is only a temporary solution, but it should be able to block your organic memories from before whichever timestamp you desire. It will put them in a secure hard drive in your temporal lobe. Once the big showdown is over you can properly go to therapy, but this should work for today.”

****

Neil didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really expected much from Aaron, but this was more than he could have anticipated. 

****

“Aaron, I—”

****

“No, no, don’t get sappy on me,” Aaron said, stepping away quickly. “We need you for this mission. I’m just doing my job.”

****

He left with a haste that belied his statement, but Neil didn’t call him on it. Instead, he downloaded the file, set the timestamp to just after his governor module was hacked, and allowed the relief to wash over him as his memories were tucked away for safekeeping. Finally, alone in own head, he lifted said appendage from Andrew’s shoulder and looked up at him.

****

“I had a flashback on the little hopper,” Neil said. 

****

Andrew’s face was carefully blank, but his eyebrow twitched in a way that let Neil knew he was annoyed at being lied to by omission. 

****

“I was going to tell you, but my processes have been scrambled since then,” Neil admitted. “The woman from my flashback, she was with the Butcher, she will probably be at the rendezvous point. I’ve been trying to determine how to carry out the mission without being compromised, but your brother seems to have figured that out for me.”

****

Andrew stared ahead, Neil couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He hadn’t had a cigarette today but his lips were stained red from the three lollipops he’d demolished. 

****

“You owe me one more favor,” Andrew said, eventually. He was still not looking at Neil, but his hand had wandered to Neil’s shoulder.

****

Neil nodded, the movement finally drawing Andrew’s eyes to him.

****

“Survive this,” Andrew said, his eyes flashing. “It’s what Bee said, whatever comes after is up to you. Just live.”

****

“You don’t think I’ll make it a priority not to die horribly?” Neil asked, mostly teasing.

****

Andrew scowled at him. “I know you won’t. Now promise me.”

****

Neil watched him. He was a beautiful man. His augments complimented his already ethereal features. Neil had never been attracted to anyone before, not the beautiful men or women in his soaps, not the ruggedly athletic Exy players he admired, not any one of his clients, whose physical appearances covered a decent selection of anthropoid beauty. From what he could tell of Nathaniel Wesninski’s memories, he had rarely, if ever, experienced sexual attraction either. But here was Andrew, with his squat metallic hands, broad shoulders, and dimples when he cared to smile. 

****

Neil wasn’t sure he deserved him, but he wanted to.

****

“I promise,” Neil said.

****

He allowed Andrew to pull his head forward again to rest on his shoulder. They sat like that, arms loose around each other, hair tangling, until Dr. Dobson called them to the hanger.

****

It was time.

****

+

****

The hopper landed 100 feet from the coordinates where the Butcher had requested the rendezvous. The Butcher and his people were already there. 

****

Neil adjusted the helmet Matt had given him during the flight. It wasn’t a SecUnit helmet, it had no special features and wasn’t customized to his measurements. It was bulky, awkward, and made of recycled plastic, but it covered his face and hair, so it would have to do. 

****

Neil, Dr. Dobson, Andrew, and Dr. Wilds exited the hopper down the ramp and started towards the Butcher’s men. They stopped with fifty feet between them. The length of a regulation Exy court, Neil noted. Even if this was just an Exy game, Neil would still be intimidated by their opponents. The Butcher had his axe leaned against his shoulder and all of his men and SecUnits had an assortment of weapons either drawn or strapped to their person. 

****

Neil wasn’t quite sure why the Butcher called his people his “men” when there were clearly women and people and aliens of other gender identities fighting for him. But he supposed it wasn’t out of line that the Butcher would be bigoted as well as a murderer. 

****

“We have come in peace to negotiate the evacuation of my people from this planet,” Dr. Dobson sent over the comm. It was too far to shout, without appearing comical.

****

“Where is our prisoner?” the Butcher sent back. He wasn’t in the mood for niceties apparently.

****

“He is injured and in no shape to travel,” Dr. Dobson replied. “We would like to request to take him with us. If you lift your surveillance of the satellite we can transfer you whatever amount of credits you desire for him.”

****

“This isn’t about credits,” the Butcher said. “It’s about honor. Revenge. We will not leave this planet without him. If you insist on harboring him, we will retaliate.”

****

As if responding to him directly, the Butcher’s spacecrafts weapons hummed as they turned on and pivoted to face the Palmetto’s hopper. 

****

“Alright, alright,” Dr. Dobson said, raising her hands as if calming a startled animal and not a fully powered war vessel’s weapons system.

****

Just beyond the clearing where they were meeting, Neil could see the Hub rising over the trees. He took stock of the SecSystem’s barrier in relation to where they were standing. He still had access to the SecSystem controls and he logged in, poking around to make sure all the programming was still functional. It had mostly recharged since the Butcher had shattered it the day before, which was lucky. 

****

Neil then overlaid the space between them and the Butcher with his map of the planet. Everything was going according to plan, so far, but there was no guarantee this couldn’t go to pieces in a matter of moments. 

****

They hadn’t had enough armor to outfit him entirely, so he could feel the cold wind on his sweaty exposed shoulders. He’d never felt so human. He hated it.

****

“We will lay down our weapons and allow you aboard our hopper to retrieve your hostage, but only if you allow my people to go free,” Dr. Dobson said.

****

The Butcher’s face was too far away for normal humans to survey, but Neil could see him clearly. He was shorter than expected, his blue eyes were a cold, stark kind of blue. Like a computer screen when the systems had crashed. 

****

“Agreed,” the Butcher said. He signaled to three of the people closest to him, one of which was the woman, Lola. “Lay down your weapons first.”

****

Dr. Dobson signaled and Neil and the others laid down their weapons reluctantly. Stowing them, or laying them on the ground.

****

Then the Butcher’s men began to approach. Lola was smiling, wide and crooked, half a second from laughing, even while overseeing a hostage negotiation. From Neil’s count, she had two dozen knives on her person, along with several automatic weapons. 

****

Once her group was within hearing distance, twenty or so feet away, Neil sunk his claws into SecSystem. Nineteen and a half feet, seventeen feet, twelve feet. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

****

Andrew fidgeted for a weapon beside him.

****

Lola cackled.

****

“I’m looking forward to welcoming Jeanie boy home again,” she called. The men that flanked Lola looked almost as pleased as her. “Now that you’ve got him all fixed up, I’ll get to take him apart from scr—”

****

Ten feet. Lola’s foot landed on a patch of unstable ground. The earth erupted, throwing her backwards.

****

Neil threw the Hub’s barrier up around the hopper and his crew. It wasn’t meant to work anywhere but the Hub, it struggled to stay solid. Neil was so busy trying to keep it from skittering away and back through the trees that he barely registered Andrew grabbing his arm and pulling him inside their spacecraft. He got a glimpse of Lola, knife in hand, attempting to stab the hostile, before the hostile’s gaping maw closed over her head and shoulders.

****

Then he had to rely on the drones to see what was happening, because the boarding plank closed behind them. 

****

“That’s what you get for not reading the flora and fauna report, bitch!” Dr. Reynolds was yelling.

****

But Neil could barely understand the resulting taunts and cheers form his crewmates. Andrew’s hand was a warm brand on his shoulder, the only thing keeping him standing. It took all of his focus to keep the barrier in place around them as the Butcher returned to his ship and opened fire. 

****

It was as if Neil had cut and paste the Hub’s barrier around the hopper, only, the document format wasn’t the same on the outside of the Hub, and it hadn’t resulted in a perfect copy. Neil had known that was a possibility, but it was grating, now, when they were being actively attacked. 

****

From what he could see on the drones, several of the Butcher’s people had been, well, butchered, by the local fauna. Even more had been abandoned when the Butcher retreated to his ship and closed the bay doors without regard for who wasn’t aboard. As a result, Neil knew the Butcher’s ship was understaffed, with several hostiles gnawing on their weapons as the sound and light drew their unwavering attention. If Neil could hold the barrier up while the hopper took flight, they could potentially get a solid head start.

****

“Go! Take off now!” Neil shouted through the comm. He didn’t know who he’d directed his order to, but from the way his crew dispersed around him, he guessed all of them.

****

Andrew manhandled him to a chair behind the co-pilot and then took up guard beside him. Dr. Dobson was piloting, shouting orders, preparing for take off, 5, 4, 3, 2—

****

The hopper shot upward. It was a feat keeping the barrier entirely around the ship, but especially when it was hurtling towards space. For a second, the Butcher’s ship stayed grounded, they were free, they were getting away.

****

Then, with almost no lag, the Butcher’s ship had risen and was upon them. Firing incessantly. 

****

“SecSystem barrier at 57 percent,” Neil said. Was he shouting? Whispering? Speaking at all? He couldn’t tell. 

****

When the Butcher’s ship stopped firing it was a relief, for the span of one breath. Then something was taking control of their piloting software. It was an AI. Neil barely had the cognizant function to give it the equivalent of a punch to the face, before going back to the barrier. But that wasn’t enough to make it so much as pause. 

****

“There’s an AI attempting to erase our piloting software and take over the ship,” Neil said. 

****

“On it,” Aaron said, from somewhere.

****

In the next few moments, the Butcher’s ship stopped firing. Neil couldn’t tell if they had run out of ammo or patience, both ships had left the atmosphere but they were too close to the Satellite for comfort. If the Butcher wanted he could spaceship hip-check them into a collision course.

****

“Aaron, switch with me,” Neil commanded. 

****

“What?” Aaron said, obviously baffled.

****

“You figure out how to stabilize the barrier, I’ll send the controls to your data pad,” Neil said. “I’ll handle the AI.”

****

“How are you gonna—”

****

But Neil was already gone. He sunk all the way into the hopper, into the piloting software’s hard drive. He suddenly had a different body, the hard vacuum of space on metal skin, saw the Butcher’s ship with his own eyes, not just through the drones and video feed. Inhabiting the same hardware, the AI and Neil could communicate almost simultaneously. Neil knew this was how the Butcher had interfered with their mission, they’d stolen this AI from The Nest on their way out and it was capable of handling most of their dirty work. It’s name was Tetsuji and it had no physical body to go back to, like Neil did.

****

If Neil could trap Tetsuji in a contained area and delete it, he could gain control of the piloting software again. It would also, likely, bring down the Butcher’s entire mainframe. Tetsuji had a hand in every system on the Butcher’s vessel.

****

But there wasn’t anything Neil could think of that the Butcher would want badly enough to send his AI’s entire code after it. There wasn’t anything. 

****

Except, maybe Neil.

****

Neil reactivated his body, he was sitting rigid in the chair behind Matt. The hopper had stuttered to a halt a few moments after Tetsuji had begun its attack and Matt and Dr. Dobson were frantically trying to regain control. Aaron was cursing as he poked angrily at his data pad, but he was making progress. Neil could see the flow of code on his data pad attempting to streamline the barrier through their remaining drones. Clever. 

****

Even still, the barrier was warped, outside it glowed brightly in patches and entirely absent in others. 

****

Andrew leaned over him, hand on the back of his neck. He frowned. “You back?”

****

“No, but I will, come back,” Neil said. “I promise.”

****

“What are you—” 

****

“You were amazing, Andrew,” Neil said, raising a hand to his face, just short of touching.

****

“Hey!” Andrew shouted. 

****

Whatever happened in the cockpit next, Neil would never know. He’d abandoned his body in that chair. Poured himself back into the hopper. 

****

He grabbed the edge of Aaron’s memory barrier in one hand and pulled, tore, shredded it to pieces. Sorry, Aaron. 

****

Tetsuji kept hacking at the piloting software for a moment and then turned, slowly, its code standing at attention, as if to stare at Neil’s memories. Even Neil hadn’t known many of them existed, but there they were, hidden in his subconsciousness and his organic brain matter, years and years of secrets and lies and deception. Prime for Tetsuji to copy and erase.

****

Neil secluded his consciousness in the little hopper. And waited.

****

Sure enough, the Butcher ordered Tetsuji into the little hopper. Tetsuji loomed over Neil’s data, primed to copy and delete and retreat back to the Butcher’s war vessel. But before he could Neil retreated. Neil sent his code back into the hanger mainframe, cut the little hopper off from the rest of the ship and ejected it from the hopper. On its way out, he set it to self destruct. 

****

Which it did in 5. 4. 3. 2. Goodbye, Tetsuji. Sorry, little hopper.

****

Neil could see Matt’s distress over the comm, as he’d been about to secure the little hopper in the hanger. Aaron was whooping in the cockpit, he’d been able to code their spare drones to take on the burden of the barrier. With Tetsuji destroyed it was no feat at all to outrun the Butcher’ vessel. Tetsuji had been their eyes, their ears, their data mining and navigational systems. Without it, they were dead in the water.

****

Dr. Dobson punched the ignition and they took off like a shot. Just them and hundreds of light years of open space for company.

****

With a pause that felt, a little, like a deep breath, Neil pulled all of his scattered code together and dropped back into his body. It felt very not good. Fucked, if you will.

****

“We’re clear,” he said. Not knowing who he’d said it to, until he looked up and saw Andrew staring at him. 

****

Everyone else was celebrating, dancing and trying to sing. Slapping each other’s butts and, in Nicky’s case, crying profusely.

****

Neil felt weird. Very weird. Very bad. 

****

He didn’t want to admit this to Andrew.

****

**PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY AT 45 AND DROPPING. CATASTROPHIC SYSTEMS FAILURE.**

****

Neil felt himself crumple. He didn’t feel anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS/SPOILERS: Non-graphic violence. Lola is eaten by a hostile, but its not described.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just want to take a moment to thank everyone who read, left comments/kudos, subscribed or bookmarked this fic! i wrote this very self-indulgently, but i might have just kept it on my computer, squirreled away to reread on my own if i hadn't had your encouragement! 
> 
> also, if you liked this fic at all, please consider reading Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries series. i can't recommend it enough! as you all probably noticed, some lines from this fic were taken from the All for the Game series and some were taken from the Murderbot Diaries. those belong to Nora Sakavic and Martha Wells respectively. i am just happy i had to opportunity to mix two of my favorite series into one big mess! 
> 
> finally, i have plotted out a kind of sequel to this. i am not sure i will finish it and it will deviate from the TMD series a lot! but look out for it sometime in the far future!
> 
> i hope you enjoy the final two chapters!

Neil’s memory was in fragments. If he had been a full bot, it would have been a thousand times worse. His organic brain, usually his downfall, couldn’t be wiped. Repressed? Sure. Hidden behind layers of numeric code? No problem. Wiped, not so much. Now he had to rely on his organic brain alone to put the fragments in order and unfortunately it’s access speed was shit.

****

It was taking fucking forever.

****

Unidentified voices on audio:

****

“Any change?”

****

“Not yet,” Pause. “Do you think we should have put him in a pod?”

****

“No, absolutely not. He’s never going anywhere near The Nest tech again. We can fix him ourselves.”

****

Neil couldn’t tell how long he’d been in this state. He’d run a diagnostic some time ago that hinted at a catastrophic failure of some sort. Which wasn’t ideal. But perhaps even without a diagnostic it should have been obvious something that wrong had happened to him. He wondered why he hadn’t been scrapped yet.

****

He poked around in his drives, out of boredom more than anything, until he found a large intact section of protected storage. It was something called… Exy. Neil began to review it.

****

Suddenly his neural connections were blossoming. Memories started sorting and ordering themselves at a higher rate. Neil gained control over his own processes and started a data repair sequence. 

****

Unidentified voices on audio:

****

“Diagnostics are showing greatly accelerated activity! He’s fixing himself.”

****

“About fucking time.”

****

Perhaps this was his client? Neil wasn’t positive, but even a guess was better than zero recognition.

****

Neil opened his eyes. He was in a small room lying on a padded surface. He had enough memory access to confirm that was unusual. Unusual was usually bad. More fragments came to him. The hopper, the Hub, his mom. Where was his mom? Neil was wearing human clothes and not a single piece of armor. The room he was in allowed him to access the video feed after some curious prodding. He was surrounded by medical equipment and three humanoids of various sizes. His hair was shaggy and had a red tint to it. His eyes were blue. 

****

Matt asked, “How do you feel?”

****

The only thing Neil had in his file for Matt was a note that read “my human friend.” That seemed impossible, but the pre-catastrophic failure Neil had written it in sparkly purple font, so it must be true.

****

“Fine,” Neil replied to his friend.

****

Matt did not seem convinced. “Do you know where you are?”

****

“Please wait while I search for that information,” Neil replied.

****

“Okay, buddy,” Matt said. “Take your time.”

****

Neil dove headfirst into the room’s access panel. He was in a MedSystem. He could tell that this was the kind of place they kept injured humans or injured augmented humans and not impaired SecUnits, just from the fact that it had a bathroom and wasn’t half Tech Support, half Chop Shop. Neil was frantic for approximately thirty seven seconds, assuming that these clients thought he was human and he’d have to pretend to be a human. 

****

He couldn’t pretend to be human. Human customs were unfathomable. What if he wanted to buy a new helmet and the shop owner thought he was interested in engaging in sexual intercourse? He’d seen that on a serial once, he was positive. The idea was appalling.

****

But then Neil remembered that he was lying in a cot in a MedSystem, which would have informed the humans straight away that he had a terminal case of being a SecUnit. 

****

“I don’t want to be a pet robot.”

****

“I’m pretty sure nobody wants that.” That was Aaron. Neil didn’t like him.

****

“I don’t like you.”

****

“I don’t like you either,” he said, but he was laughing.

****

“It’s not funny.”

****

“I’m going to report that your cognition level is at forty-five perfect.”

****

“Fuck you.”

****

“Fifty percent, then.”

****

Neil remembered the Butcher. Lola. The war vessel.

****

Before he could succumb to terror he confirmed that he was no longer in proximity of the Butcher’s men. In fact, he was on a transportation satellite outside the planet Palmetto. Weird. 

****

The good thing about terror was that it accelerated his memory repair. 

****

Andrew was sitting in the corner of his room when he came online this time. Andrew sat in that corner a lot, he never said anything, or approached, or so much as looked at Neil. Often he’d just stare at the door as if guarding it while Neil was compromised. Neil supposed he appreciated that. He didn’t have any notes on Andrew. His file just read “ANDREW,” with a few knife emoticons. Neil would have to reevaluate his filing system once he was fully operational.  

****

At some point, Neil’s time processor was still undergoing repair, Aaron suggested Neil go on a walk around the MedBay. 

****

Neil didn’t see the point in this exercise. He wasn’t human. Once he was fully functional all of his systems would be at 100 percent capacity. He didn’t need to stretch his legs to keep his muscles from eroding like unaugmented anthropoids. When he pointed this out, Aaron made a face like Neil had said something distasteful.

****

“Go for a walk, take Andrew with you,” he said. “You deserve each other.”

****

So Neil did. They ambled along the halls, Neil barely processing his surroundings, let alone if they were still on the same floor or building. Andrew led him around the multicolored sections of the MedBay until they reached the cafeteria. Here, Andrew sat and placed a food item in front of Neil.

****

Neil tried it. It was hard to chew and uncomfortable to swallow.

****

“You suck on them, genius,” Andrew said. Demonstrating. 

****

Neil stopped munching on the food and instead let it sit in his mouth and be dissolved by his saliva. It was too sweet. He turned down his taste receptors to twenty percent. He finished the purple part of the food before Andrew and attempted to unravel the white stick part with his teeth.

****

Andrew reached across and plucked the stick from his mouth, tossing it into a trash receptacle near their table. 

****

“Don’t eat paper,” Andrew said.

****

“Why would part of a foot item be inconsumable?” Neil asked.

****

“No more lollipops for you.” Andrew said. He led him back to his room and resumed staring at the door.

****

“Do you know where you are, Neil?” Dr. Dobson asked, later.

****

Neil had shimmied through the MedSystem’s controls and surveyed the transportation satellite from several angles. He knew they were hovering above Palmetto. He was pretty sure this is where his clients hailed from. 

****

“I don’t like planets,” Neil said. “Something is always trying to eat my humans and they’re hard to escape from.”

****

Dr. Dobson smiled. “We’re on Palmetto’s transportation satellite, awaiting permission to head down to the planet’s surface. Do you remember what happened to you?”

****

“I had a catastrophic failure,” Neil said. “No offense, Doc. But that’s pretty obvious.”

****

“You uploaded yourself onto the hopper to fight off the Butcher’s AI,” she said.

****

“What happened to the Butcher?” Neil asked. The question filled him with fear, but he had to ask. There weren’t any files accessible through the satellite on the attack. 

****

“We sent the Intergalactic Patrol after him,” Dr. Dobson said. “They’ll find him, not to worry.”

****

Obviously, this did nothing to stop Neil from worrying. But he had bigger problems to concern himself about at the present moment. He wanted to know why he hadn’t been returned to The Nest. Their mission was over. His clients should have turned him over to his owners and he should have been either scrapped or salvaged and mind wiped.

****

When he brought this up with Dr. Dobson, her smile faded.

****

“We’ve listed you as destroyed equipment. They won’t come for you, Neil. You’ll come back to Palmetto with us and once you’re repaired, you’re free to go wherever you want,” she said.

****

He couldn’t imagine Dr. Dobson would lie about something like that. But the sheer number of possibilities laid before him overwhelmed him so much that he curled onto his side on his cot and set his cognitive function to Do Not Disturb.

****

+

****

New memories kept popping up all the time. New crew members visited him and sparked connections in his neural synapses. Drs. Walker and Reynolds showed up hand in hand, a grouchy cargo pilot in their shadow, they thanked him for helping them on the planet and during the final battle and promised to get him a haircut and new clothes once they were planetside again.

****

Dr. Wilds came once a day and updated him on their crew’s status. It was the only thing that kept the days straight with his limited time management capabilities, so he was infinitely grateful.

****

Kevin appeared one day, as if he hadn’t been absent at all, and spurred Neil into conversation about Exy. Informing him that he couldn’t fall behind on the Exy season just because his cognitive function was still only at seventy percent. His presence sparked memories from Before and Then, which was a refreshing bout of multitasking. 

****

One morning, which Neil knew because Dr. Wilds had just left for brunch, there was a commotion in the hallway. Neil went to the corner of the room, the most defensible position and activated his arm cannon. From the video feeds, Neil determined he wasn’t under attack and stood down. Instead, there was a couple embracing in the middle of the hall, causing nurses and doctors to grumble. Even some of the patients were staring at the men and ogling.

****

Both men were sobbing loudly and clutching each other. One of them had patient’s scrubs on and was riddled with bruises. But Neil supposed the turbulent reaction was probably due to one of the men being Jeremy Knox, intergalactic Exy sensation.

****

When Neil recognized Jean Moreau’s face several more memories slid into place. Neil hunkered into his cot for the rest of the afternoon.

****

The next time Dr. Wilds visited she had a proposition.

****

“In a quarter cycle we’re going on an assessment survey of a new planet on the rim. It’s independent of the IUS so we’ll need extra security. We’d like you to come along to keep us from dying.”

****

Neil wasn’t sure how to respond.

****

“We can wait for your answer, of course,” Dr. Wilds said, waving her hands. “You can’t enter into anything contractual until you complete your memory rebuild. Or I’m sure Dobson would flay me alive.”

****

“Why?” Neil asked, feeling testy. “Because she’s my owner?”

****

“Nope. Because she’s your legal representative. She’s a registered psychiatrist here on Palmetto, that was her day job before she was promoted to the counsel for a term. As your psychiatrist and a counsel member she has petitioned the Palmetto counsel to accelerate acceptance of your citizenship,” Dr. Wilds informed him.

****

This was too much for Neil to process in one go, so instead he took a nap.

****

The next time Dr. Dobson visited she brought half the crew with her. They had a cake that someone had written “Happy 95 percent cognition day!” on in presumably edible blue writing. They fed him a piece, not seeming to care that SecUnits didn’t need frivolous food like cake to survive. Neil ate it in silence, watching his humans celebrating around him. They left him mostly alone, unless his eyes lingered on one of their faces too long. Then they attempted to converse with him, so he’d stuff his mouth with more cake.

****

By the time is was over and Neil was alone, he felt exhausted in a wires deep kind of way. He didn’t know what he wanted tomorrow, or the next day, or a quarter cycle from now. But in that very moment, he wanted sleep.

****

+

****

**REBUILD PROCESS COMPLETE. COGNITION LEVEL 100 PERCENT.**

****

+

****

In the middle of the night, upon memory rebuild completion, Neil sat up in his cot.

****

Everything was finally clear. His memories were all in order, perhaps fresher than before with the addition of the ones that had been locked behind Aaron’s wall and years of repression and denial. He remembered the attack and his faulty plan. 

****

Note to self: Never take on an AI by throwing your consciousness into a hopper ever, ever again. You almost deleted yourself.

****

He hopped out of bed while going over Aaron’s notes in his medical chart. They had indeed logged Neil as destroyed equipment and used a backup of his systems from the Hub and statements from the crew and Jean to begin to build a case against The Nest. Neil couldn’t help but feel like it was a noble but lost cause. Palmetto and the IUS had a right to sue The Nest for breaking the treaty, but The Nest had enough money and power to avoid serious repercussions. That was his humans though. Noble even when the odds were stacked against them.

****

Meanwhile they had changed Neil’d appearance back to default settings to mask his appearance from The Nest. His hair curled over his brow, in the mirror by his cot he could see that he looked more like Nathaniel than he had even as Nathaniel. 

****

Also, his port was gone. He realized this only as he stumbled upon the notes in his chart. They’d removed his port and covered up that section of his neck with bioengineered skin. Neil probed at it warily, but it really was gone. He felt a prickle in the corners of his eyes. Startled by the sensation, he looked back at the mirror just before he started to cry. He watched the tears progression. They trickled down his cheeks and into his mouth or down the swoop of his neck. 

****

After a few moments, he wiped them away hastily. He retrieved a jacket hanging on a hook by the door. With his pants, his arms covered, his hood up, and his port gone, he could be any other augmented human on the satellite.

****

With one final sweep of the room, he left the hospital behind.

****

+

****

It was easy enough to procure a shuttle ticket. Neil just hacked the teller booth and convinced it he had plenty of money for the transaction. Next thing he knew he was waiting by the platform, with an hour or so to spare until departure. 

****

He watched people come and go. Some were running, some were ambling along hindering the progress of the people who were running. Some were crying as they hugged loved ones goodbye. One notable human flipped off her parental figures as she boarded a shuttle to a different galaxy. Good for her.

****

Neil watched all of them and before he knew it, it was time for his shuttle to leave. He watched that leave without him too. He didn’t bother stealing another ticket. He just sat on his bench, wondering where some of these people would be at the end of the day.

****

When Andrew took a seat beside him, he wasn’t surprised. He’d expected him sooner.

****

“Have you been watching from the shadows this whole time?” Neil asked. He knew the answer, he’d spotted Andrew by the ficus in the far corner an hour ago. 

****

“Are you actually getting on one of these or do you just enjoy causing the hospital staff pain and panic?” Andrew countered.

****

Neil didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t want to become Palmetto’s pet SecUnit. He didn’t want The Nest to find him. He didn’t want to lead the Butcher straight to his new family. He didn’t want to leave.

****

He told Andrew as much and watched as Andrew worked his jaw. Neil could remember the almost-kissing now. He could remember Andrew leaning towards him, eyes slipping shut. He didn’t want to lose that either. 

****

“We don’t need a pet,” Andrew said, eventually. “But we could use another Security Consultant. It’s hard making sure no one on the team dies, when it’s just me.”

****

Neil wouldn’t mind that. Being a SecUnit was being a piece of equipment, being a security consultant was being a crewmember.

****

“As for the rest, all of us found Palmetto because we needed some sort of safety. You really should have read our files. If you had, you wouldn’t be having a panic attack in a shuttle bay.”

****

“I’m not —”

****

“Stay,” Andrew asked. He wasn’t demanding, or pleading, or ordering, he was asking. “Stay with me. Us.”

****

“What will you give me?” Neil asked, almost smiling.

****

Andrew glanced down at his lips and back up at his eyes.

****

“Yes or no, Neil,” Andrew asked.

****

“Yes,” Neil replied.

****

Andrew kissed like he did everything else. With slow, careful consideration, and then heedless passion. 

****

Neil still didn’t know what he wanted. But for now, he had a place to go home to while he figured it out.


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: i had no plans to write an epilogue until i'd written two pages of this and realized what was happening. i just want these kids to be happy in every universe :')

“Where’s Neil?” Andrew asked, for what felt like the hundredth time.

****

Matt Boyd gazed up at him in confusion, as if Andrew wasn’t inquiring into the whereabouts of the man’s best friend, whose schedule Boyd usually had memorized down to the time and place.

****

Andrew had been wandering the village for over an hour. Starting about thirty minutes after Neil had failed to meet him for lunch. Neil’s comm was dead, again, which left Andrew meandering the streets and asking after his own boyfriend. He might as well start making up posters. If Boyd didn’t know where Neil was, he may be well and truly lost.

****

“Shouldn’t you know?” Matt asked. “Isn’t he at lunch with you?”

****

Andrew looked down at his own shoes, which were planted firmly on the entrance of Boyd’s mechanic shop and not at the diner where he usually had lunch with Neil. Boyd had just wheeled himself out from underneath a hoverbike. He was covered in grease and sweat, his hair held back with a bandana. He would have been remarkably attractive if he wasn’t so stupid and if Andrew wasn’t dating an attractive but similarly stupid former SecUnit.

****

It had been half a cycle since Neil had come to stay with them on Palmetto. He was a true Fox now and in true Fox fashion, he was a disaster.

****

“I’ll check the farm,” Andrew said, leaving the mechanics with the door swinging wildly behind him.

****

If Neil was laying under a herd of goats at the farm, afraid to move and hurt them, again, while Nicky did absolutely nothing to intervene, Andrew was going to kill them both.

****

“Wait!” Boyd shouted after him. There was a commotion and then Boyd was exiting the shop, out of breath and now covered in suspicious green slime. “I just remembered, he said something about going to the Exy court this morning.”

****

Ah. In that case, Neil could be at the Exy court for the next 3 days and not be aware it had been more than an hour. For the past half a cycle, whenever there was a spare moment, Kevin had been teaching Neil Exy. It was currently the bane of Andrew’s existence. He didn’t know why he hadn’t checked there first. Perhaps, out of the hope that Neil had come to grievous harm and hadn’t simply forgotten about him because of a horrible murder sport.

****

He waved to Boyd and headed in the direction of the court. Their village was small, rimmed with tall purple forestation that grew out of crunchy green sand. Above the trees, three moons were making their way across the sky, along with their one red sun. A few hundred miles south Palmetto’s rings were visible, but here it was just a cloudy pink sky, threatening rain.

****

A couple of kits were play fighting in the street. Andrew stepped around them. Hundreds of years ago, when foxes were first introduced to this planet they’d had pointy ears and bright orange coats. Or so, Bee claimed. The foxes that wandered around town, pretending to be defiant strays instead of the prized wildlife that they were, had floppy ears and their coats were dulled from thousands of generations of domestication. They still fought in the middle of the sidewalk like they were wild things, but they were spoiled and lazy and weren’t fooling anyone.

****

He passed by Bee’s office. Since she was still fulfilling her term on the counsel, her small therapy practice was often shuttered as she spent her days commuting back and forth from the capital. So Andrew was surprised to see her in the window of her office, sipping at a mug of what was probably hot chocolate, if Andrew knew her well enough.

****

Bee smiled warmly at him and waved him over but he shook his head.

****

“Searching for Neil,” he mouthed at her and continued on his way after she nodded in understanding.

****

He wandered down Main Street. Renee was hovering in the window of her shop, fussing over the daily specials sign. She was covered in flour. From this glimpse of her, not many would guess that she was a prized chemist, a revolutionary in her field. When she was off-duty, running her bakery, she often looked more harried than when she was in her lab tinkering with toxic chemical experiments.

****

She always insisted that science was more forgiving than retail.

****

She scrambled away from the window to help some customers. Standing behind the counter, Allison was flipping through a magazine, ostensibly not helping even though she had recently started working there part-time. She looked up, as if sensing Andrew’s judgmental stare and Andrew spun away before she could attempt to distract him from his mission.

****

Down the same road was the small hospital where his brother and sister-in-law worked. As if summoned by his contempt, Aaron and Katelyn appeared on a bench in the park across from their place of work as he approached.

****

Aaron raised an eyebrow at him, a sandwich halfway to his mouth.

****

“Lose something?” he asked snidely.

****

“Oh! Hello, Andrew,” Katelyn said.

****

Andrew nodded at her and glared at Aaron. He and Katelyn had been trying out civility since the wedding. But he’d made no promises of the sort to his brother.

****

He stomped past them, trying not to appear in a hurry even as the Exy stadium came into view.

****

He slammed open the doors, startling Dan from where she’d been perched on the front counter. She didn’t technically get paid by the court, but she was always there when they weren’t on a mission, helping two of her adopted parents run the place. Wymack and Abby were nowhere to be seen, probably at lunch like regular people.

****

“Jeez, who— Oh,” Dan said, processing that Andrew Minyard was marching through the foyer into the stadium. She winced. “You might not want to go in there.”

****

Andrew paused with his hand prepared to slam the door to the stadium open. He turned to her with a raised eyebrow.

****

“Kevin was on the comm with Jean a couple days ago and let it slip, that, well…” Dan trailed off, waving her hands in the air as if to convey her message for her. “He’s here.”

****

“Moreau?” Andrew said.

****

Dan nodded. “And his husband.”

****

Great. Wonderful. Fantastic. Just what Andrew needed today. He pushed his way into the court, expecting to have either a fight or a breakdown on his hands. The stadium was small. There were only ten rows of seats surrounding the main court. But the court itself was Exy regulation sized. The little leagues played on it in the afternoons and the intramural teams, which Andrew was reluctantly a member of, played once every two weeks. The local college team played on it during their season and the professional home team that Wymack and Dan coached, played on it the other half of the year. Kevin played on it whenever he deigned to grace it with his presence.

****

They were a small village, so it made sense to have such a small, multipurpose stadium.

****

It was still a surprise to see two professional Exy players playing there against Kevin and Neil. Andrew had watched Trojans games on the feed. Kevin had viewing parties once in awhile and the screen took up half the room. They were larger than life and towered over Neil as they stole the ball and launched it down the court. But Neil was fast, people always forgot that. Even for an attempt at a SecUnit, he was remarkably agile. He plucked the ball out of the air before it could sink into the home goal and launched it towards Kevin, who made his shot.

****

The away goal light lit up red and Kevin whooped.

****

Before they could start up the game again, Andrew stormed forward and banged a fist on the plexiglas. All four men turned to stare at him, but only Neil looked moved by his presence. He removed his helmet and walked over to meet Andrew at the court doors.

****

“Sorry,” Neil said. His hair was sweaty and sticking to his forehead. He was flushed but whether it was from exertion or embarrassment, Andrew wasn’t sure. “Things got a little out of hand and— am I very late?”

****

“You were so late I thought you packed up and left to start a new life on Neo Earth,” Andrew said, deadpan. This wasn’t an exaggeration, Neil had run away twice in the last half cycle. The possibility had crossed Andrew’s mind.

****

Neil squirmed. “I did think about it, when he showed up, but,” Neil looked over at where Moreau and Kevin were standing, talking heatedly about their last play. Moreau had his arm around Knox’s shoulders. “He doesn’t hate me.”

****

“Why would he hate you?” Andrew said, wanting to sigh.

****

He’d been trying to get Neil to see Bee for therapy for awhile now, with mild success. This was one of the reasons. He seemed to think everything that had happened to everybody was his own, personal fault. But Neil also seemed to enjoy talking around his problems, more than about them. The last time Andrew had walked in on one of Bee and Neil’s therapy sessions, they’d been making cupcakes and discussing Eden’s Twilight in Andrew’s kitchen.

****

“You saved his life. Twice.” Andrew reminded him.

****

“I’m not him,” Neil said, almost whispering. “Nathaniel. He thinks I’m his friend but I’m just Neil. Nathaniel’s gone and I’m just,” he waved at himself, “me.”

****

Andrew stared at him for a long moment. His hair was getting long, soft auburn curls were tied into a bun at the base of his neck, covering where his port used to be. His light blue eyes were half zoomed out and Andrew knew he must be checking the Exy news while talking with him, damn junkie.

****

“Knowing those idiots,” Andrew said, waving at the three sweaty men at center court. “They’re probably just happy you can still play Exy with them.”

****

Neil smiled. This was a new thing he’d picked up recently. Probably from Boyd. Ugh. He had one dimple on his right cheek. It was gross.

****

Neil leaned forward and after gauging Andrew’s reaction, pecked him on the lips. The smallest peck that left Andrew angry for wanting more.

****

“Let’s go get lunch,” Neil said.

****

“Don’t suggest that like it’s a brand new idea,” Andrew said. “We were supposed to meet two hours ago.”

****

“Are you getting food?” Kevin called over. “We’re coming too!”

****

“No, keep playing Exy, don’t let us disturb you,” Andrew said.

****

“Don’t be ridiculous Andrew. We can’t play two on one,” Kevin said, stomping off the court.

****

Andrew briefly considered murdering Kevin, but decided there would be too many witnesses and people who might want to investigate his death, to follow through. Instead, he went to wait in the stands while everyone detoured to the showers before lunch.

****

There, Wymack found him. He had his sleeves rolled up and his tattoos on full display. When he’d had his turn on the counsel, Wymack had spent the entire two cycles stressed and sleep-deprived. He’d collapsed once and Kevin had called Andrew in the middle of the night, hiccuping his way through sobs. Now that Wymack was back to running the stadium and his Exy teams, he was much more relaxed. One of his foxes wound its way between Wymack’s feet as he went to sit on the bench in front of Andrew.

****

“Your boy had quite the shock today,” Wymack said.

****

Andrew had long given up trying to persuade Wymack that Neil wasn’t “his boy.”

****

“I hope he punched someone when he recognized Moreau. I hope it was Kevin.”

****

Wymack shook his head. “Moreau looked like he was going to cry, like he’d been crying the whole way here. Neil just looked at him and said ‘You play Exy right?’”

****

“Of course he did.”

****

“This place has been different since you brought him back,” Wymack said. “Lighter. The foxes like him.”

****

The foxes liking someone was unanimous praise to the villagers. It was basically an endorsement for leader of the counsel. And they did like Neil. Two fox mutts of indeterminate breeding had followed Neil home the other day. They were currently making mincemeat of Andrew’s sofa.

****

“I’m glad you convinced him to stay, kid,” Wymack said.

****

“He can leave whenever he wants,” Andrew said. “But he has a home here in the meantime.”

****

Wymack looked at the court. A thoughtful expression on his face.

****

“I think all that kid ever wanted was a home,” Wymack said. He prodded the fox now resting at his feet. “He’s like these things, they run around the village and fight and hide in the woods, but at the end of the night they’ll be curled around your head, purring.”

****

“Andrew!” Neil called from the door of the locker room. “Ready to go?”

****

“Am _I_ ready to go?” Andrew repeated, rolling his eyes.

****

He said his goodbyes to Wymack and joined Neil by the exit.

****

He held Neil’s hand as they walked to the diner, both of them quiet, listening to Kevin ranting to their guests about the upcoming Exy Playoffs. The clouds had finally gathered enough to drizzle some rain upon them. Neil looked up as a raindrop hit him on the cheek. It slid down his neck, to the collar of his shirt.

****

He turned and smiled at Andrew.

****

Andrew pecked him on the cheek and tried to decide what he wanted for lunch.

**Author's Note:**

> Augmented Human: A human who has been given “augments,” like ports, cameras in their eyes, robot hands, etc. These augments can be personal preference, medical necessity (like a prosthesis), or done via illegal research. These augments can make them very similar to SecUnit’s, except SecUnit’s are typically clones and are SecUnit’s from birth.  
> ComfortUnit: A polite term in this universe for “Sexbot.”  
> Governor Module: The control center of a SecUnit’s brain that is controlled by The Nest and tells SecUnit’s what to do.  
> Hopper: Space transport vehicle.  
> Hub: The “home base” for researcher’s while they are on a new planet. It is a temporary living facility similar to really big, expensive, technologically advanced tents.  
> HubSystem: The network that controls how the Hub functions.  
> MedSystem: Medical System. The network that controls the Medical bay at the Hub.  
> SecUnit: Security Unit. A cyborg who is rented out to researcher’s as security. Normally these cyborg’s actions are controlled by The Nest. They have no will of their own, or that’s what everyone assumes.  
> SecSystem: Security System. The network that is in control of the Hub’s security.
> 
> Thanks for reading!! I hope you enjoyed!! <3


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